The Guy in Second Place
by The Blue Fenix
Summary: As seen in "Finding Middle Ground" and "The Limmerance Succession Adaptation," Wendy Watson is happily combining business and romance in her relationship to the Middleman. Tyler Ford, the guy she left behind her, is taking the change less well.
1. Chapter 1

The Guy in Second Place

Dedicated to Buzz Aldrin. War hero, test pilot, doctor of engineering, and astronaut. Or as he will always be known, the _second_ man to walk on the Moon.

-----

Tyler Ford was at work early. He'd been doing that a lot, lately. Not just because the work was interesting and time-consuming, but because the rest of his life was joyless. For a few glorious weeks he'd had a wonderful girlfriend, musical creativity, and The Miracle of the Steady Paycheck all at once. He'd been flying high, which made the breakup -- blunt, humiliating, and from his standpoint out of the blue -- that much harder. Without intending it his fingers slipped into his suit coat pocket, closed around a small envelope that had been left at reception for him weeks ago. There was a platinum and diamond tennis bracelet coiled inside. _Give her that, Wendy was honest. About most things anyway._

Dave at the main security station passed him through with a nod. Tyler went for coffee -- Manservant Neville provided expensive blends in all the employee break rooms, one of the thousand details that made him a class act -- and on to his desk. In theory, Tyler acted as 'right hand' and 'attaché' for his billionaire CEO. In practice, it meant anything from doing parts of Neville's secretary's job to playing "suited goon on the left" in an incredible range of business meetings. Which was fair. In the long run Neville wanted Tyler so familiar with his thought processes and his business that Neville could make the basic policy decisions -- like "buy Greenland" -- and leave Tyler to oversee the details. That was going to take a heck of a lot of on-the-job training.

The pile of paper in Tyler's in-box was half an inch thicker than it had been last night. When he logged into his computer, the e-mail box was worse. Neville had been working late again. Tyler still wasn't certain how many hours a day his boss spent on the job. Close to twenty, except when he disappeared a few days at a time with minimal warning. Neville was in his office again already -- or still -- since the door was half open.

His mind elsewhere, Tyler had rescheduled a meeting and skimmed three memos before he noticed a small, square box on his desk between the monitor and the CPU. A sticky note on the outside said _good job_ in Neville's spidery, semi-legible handwriting. Tyler opened it and found a wristwatch inside, chunky matte gold on a leather band. Tyler sighed, shoved the watch in his pocket and went into the main office.

Manservant Neville was typing on his desktop with the speed of a concert pianist; he smiled warmly when his assistant came in. "You found it, then."

"We have to talk." Tyler held up the watch. "_This_ close to calling Human Resources and filing a sexual harassment claim." Not many people were willing to kid the hell out of a billionaire multi-media etc. etc. Tyler was an exception, not least because he genuinely liked his odd, brilliant employer. "I don't need a watch."

"I noticed you don't wear one."

"When I'm being a musician, I don't have to. When I'm being emergency-backup-you, there's a clock on this cell phone."

Neville's smile was amused, a little cynical. "Humor me. The Swiss manufacturer is in talks to merge with one of our subsidiaries; it's no more of a hardship than if one of your artist friends stood you to a Coke." Tyler bristled a little. Neville held up a hand. "No offense meant. You know, and I know, that clothes don't make the man. You'll have to deal with plenty who think otherwise, though. No reason the pricier parts of the protective camouflage have to come at your own expense." Neville shrugged, almost diffident. "I thought you deserved a thank-you for putting in sixteen hours over the weekend. In a row, if memory serves."

Tyler sat down, absently put the watch on. "It would have taken half of that if I'd known what I was doing."

"You'll know next time. I've yet to see you make the same mistake twice." Neville glanced at papers on his desk. "You're making an impression, you know. I've caught three vice-presidents trying to poach you for their own departments, and one executive vice-president trying to get you fired at any cost." Neville shrugged. "He was on my exit list anyway. We can't afford any deadwood when we roll out the firmware upgrades to the U-Masters. And that, my friend, brings us to the socially awkward portion of the morning." Neville looked sympathetic. "I gather that you and Miss Watson have parted company."

"Yeah, we had a difference of opinion." Nearly a month, and it stung like it had happened yesterday. "She wanted to nail her boss, and I didn't want her to." Damn it, that guy was at least _thirty_, maybe thirty-five. He had no business dating somebody Wendy's age... Tyler yanked his thoughts out of the well-worn path. "I haven't seen her or her friends since."

"That must have hurt. I know you were very close." Neville called up a file on his desktop. "I ask because the company she works for is having some rather peculiar interactions with ours. All the more peculiar because I'm finding it nearly impossible to learn anything about them." His eyes were sympathetic. "I hate to pry, but did she ever talk about work?"

Tyler shrugged. "No more than I did, about here. She had a bad schedule, kind of like mine but without the roof helicopters." Unless that had been an excuse too, to spend more time with _that guy_. "We were always having to break dates and reschedule. Lacey said international consultants, but I think that meant high-end security guards. Her work uniform sure looked like one. Office in a funny little building uptown."

"That address is one of the few solid facts we do have," Neville said. "They wanted to hire you at one point, before we met."

"Yeah, but I'd missed the interview. One of those head injury things from when I got mugged by Mexican wrestlers. That was the day I met Wendy, come to think of it. I went to the building later, talked to some old secretary who looked like she bit the heads off Rottweilers. They'd already filled the job. With Wendy, I guess."

"That mugging incident ... was Miss Watson present when you were attacked?"

"No idea. She never said so, I figure she would have mentioned." Tyler tried to keep his tone light, as if discussing Wendy didn't hurt.

Neville looked pained. "I ask because ... well, there's no delicate way to put this. She was a suspect in a major arson investigation. A gas explosion at another of her temporary jobs, a few months before you met. A butane lighter belonging to her was found at the point of ignition."

"That would be the only memento left behind after her father's DC-3 tragically crashed under as-yet-unexplained and mysterious circumstances," Tyler said. "When she was fourteen. She carries it all the time, but she'd never start a fire."

"The only evidence against her was circumstantial -- but the investigation was dropped with a speed that was suspicious in itself. I think the police were pressured."

Tyler felt vaguely protective. "Is it her company you're interested in, or Wendy?"

"Her company. But your Wendy is the only person associated with it who has ... well, _any_ public record. Birth certificate, employment history, known address." Neville slid a photograph across the table. Tyler gritted his teeth; _that guy_, crossing a sidewalk someplace, a low-quality image that had probably come from a security camera. "We can't even pin down his name," the CEO said.

Tyler stopped, blinked. Thought again. "Now that you mention it, I didn't get a name either. It was all 'boss' from her, 'Wendy's boss' from Lacey." Or 'sexy boss.' He'd thought Lacey was the one carrying a torch for that guy, until everything crashed down at once.

Manservant Neville shifted forward in his seat. "I'll level with you, Tyler; I'm concerned. All that secrecy can't be good. My own suspicion is that 'international consulting' is a polite term for industrial espionage, possibly with sabotage to order as a sideline."

Tyler fingered the bracelet in his pocket. "No. I can't imagine her doing that."

"Again, there are no tactful words ... you didn't imagine her betraying your relationship either."

"No." Tyler's fist clenched in the pocket. "Look, I don't see how this could be connected. She and I got together weeks before I'd even heard of you and this job. And the fact they wanted to hire _me_ is actually in their favor; I'm no spy guy."

"Don't underestimate yourself, Tyler," Neville said gently. "You're decisive, observant, mentally adaptable, calm under stress ... after all, I hired you myself. Who knows who or what you'd be by now if you'd taken that job months ago."

Tyler shook his head. "I'm not real happy with Wendy, but she's no crook."

"She might have become involved in something untoward without realizing it. As I say, we aren't worried about her; we're worried about her employers." Neville tapped the photograph. "Especially him. Any facts you have, even impressions ... I can hire investigative teams, but they need a starting point. The smallest detail could be key."

Tyler had fantasized about winning her back. Maybe he'd purely by accident, no stalking, run across them in a restaurant. He'd get there just as _that guy_ was being mean to Wendy, like belittling her paintings or her art-college degree. And then Tyler would step in and ...

He'd never been able to make that daydream work out. For one thing, 'that guy' was polite to a fault. The few times Tyler had seen him, dropping Wendy off or picking her up for work, he'd called both Tyler and Noser 'mister' in all seriousness. As far as going beyond angry words, that guy was a lot big... a lot _taller_ than Tyler. And the way he carried himself...

"That's it," Tyler said. "I was an Army brat, I saw Special Forces around sometimes. It's not 'look at me, I can beat up anybody in sight,' not the ones that were any good. Just waiting, real still until there's some reason to move. Like that. Wendy said ... not Army. SEALs, she said once he was in Navy SEALs. The Gulf, I think."

"That would describe a fairly large set of men, but not an infinite one," said Neville. "Good work as always, Tyler. Go about your business, let things ferment -- tell me if any other facts float to the surface. I'm sorry I had to bring up such uncomfortable matters with you."

"No sweat, boss," Tyler said absently. He adjusted the new watch a bit. It was comfortable. He'd probably decide to wear it all the time.

Back at his desk, Tyler called up a computerized map of Wendy's neighborhood and cross-matched it with real estate listings. He was in luck. The building across the street, facing her sublet's balcony and windows, was for sale. He set the process in motion for FATBOY to acquire it, and then turned to a 'spy gear' website.

---

When Tyler was out of earshot, Manservant Neville spoke into his phone headset. "Tag one of the more freethinking souls in the computer division, Cora. I want into classified Pentagon personnel records. Basic data on all Navy SEALs in the last fifteen years who aren't still on active duty. Cull it down to white males over six feet tall and match to this photograph." A few brisk keystrokes. "Don't omit subjects listed as dead. When you have a match, I want everything. Down to the number of dental fillings and who he took to the high school prom." Neville listened. "Yes, terribly tedious. That, if I may say, is why I pay them. Split the job across several of our bright boys if you think it best. Buy an Xbox or some such for whoever gives me a name."

---

Tyler signed out a company car. His own had been pretty well-known in this neighborhood. His new business card and FATBOY corporate line of credit got him access to the building by six that night. The owners of the spy store, for the same reason, had been falling all over themselves to provide whatever he wanted. The next-door building -- a warehouse that had never been converted to illegal sublets or anything else lucrative -- was virtually an empty shell. But the power was on. A partial loft on Wendy's side of the building let him overlook her windows from about ten feet higher and fifty feet of horizontal distance. He rigged all his new equipment and waited for something interesting.

It was an Art Crawl night. Tyler remembered they'd been planning one for about this time, back when he was still part of Wendy's life. At the moment he could only see Lacey inside the sublet. She was wearing underwear and a long t-shirt, mixing up something in the kitchen. Organic vegan cruelty-free dip to go with organic vegan cruelty-free raw vegetables, Tyler was prepared to bet. He scanned the living room in more detail. He'd missed it the first time, looking for people instead of things, but there were two -- no, three -- paintings on display he'd never seen before. In Wendy's hand.

His stomach churned. _I haven't written a note or word of music since you left me; I guess you're taking it better. You would._ If anything her brush strokes were more decisive, her color choices richer and deeper. One image was an abstract scarlet slash with two sets of predatory eyes lurking in the background. The second showed an explosion of light coming out of a tall, blue, rectangular box or cabinet. The third was a spiky, multi-legged alien that somehow looked friendly and even endearing against a mossy green forest.

The apartment door came open. Tyler braced himself, but it wasn't Wendy. Noser, guitar in hand, came up behind Lacey and began nuzzling her neck. _No reason people who ARE single and available shouldn't get together_. Tyler watched anyway, and took a few still photos for practice.

The sublet, and its neighbors, kept filling up as the sun went down and Art Crawl grew. Wendy was one of the last to arrive, not the first. She wore a vivid gold pantsuit that left her arms bare. Along with her work-provided watch, of course. _That guy_ hovered at her elbow. It took Tyler a minute to realize he wasn't in the rent-a-cop uniform this time but a sweater and slacks of similar military-muted colors. Tyler couldn't have cared less, though he did note the absence of the whatever-it-was gun.

They weren't holding hands or touching each other every few seconds, the way Wendy and Tyler had done. At first he was relieved to see that. But the longer he watched, the more the knot tightened in his stomach. Wendy didn't behave like the younger trophy-Twinkie to a strangely warped (he'd have to be warped, right?) and intimidating older guy. She was poised, confident, smiling. And while _that guy _was far from the life of the party, Art Crawl seemed to like him all right. He traded a word or two with almost everyone present. At one point he said something with a straight face that got an open laugh from Noser. The only person who steered clear of That Guy was Pip, and he never liked anyone.

Tyler felt like he was crawling on broken glass, admitting it even to himself, but Wendy looked better than she ever had before. Like there was nothing she couldn't handle. Her skin practically glowed with energy and muscle tone; she looked _sleek_. No, worse. Satisfied. Tyler turned a little, never taking his eyes from Art Crawl, and punched the wall beside the window. It didn't help. He could have picked up the conversation with a parabolic mike, even recorded it, but this was about all the information he could handle.

That guy left around midnight, alone, in the clunky-ugly black sedan with the odd vanity plates. Tyler thought about following, but he wasn't sure how to do it without being seen. He didn't need to do anything else tonight; there was always tomorrow.

---

A nervous computer drone, jittering with caffeine overload and fatigue, brought a thick stack of papers to the CEO's office just after one in the morning. The very first sheet, a page scanned from a high school yearbook, told Neville he was on the right track. "Hello Clarence," he said mildly, and began to read.

---

By public reputation, FATBOY had some of the best computer systems in the world. In private truth they were even better, more subtle and advanced than the strictly-human state of the art. But they weren't the only ones. At a dozen points on the web, data ghosts reported that someone was looking at specific scattered, obscure pieces of information. At their home base a more sophisticated program counted up the hits, noted their common point of origin, and called for fully sentient help.

---


	2. Chapter 2

The Guy in Second Place

Part Two

The Middleman still didn't like sleeping in the big bed without Wendy. He could tolerate it, though. The darkest parts of his subconscious were beginning to believe that they had a true bond, that the sexual connection wouldn't suddenly fade for her. Harder yet, beginning to believe fate wasn't setting him up for the Hell of losing her entirely. She wasn't fickle. And in spite of her slight build, she wasn't fragile. He could sleep, the nights she spent at her sublet. He could even look forward to the rediscovery after missing each other a little.

Wendy had said once, when they first came together, that being partners in bed as well as battle felt like every boundary between them had disappeared. He'd defined himself for so many years by his limits, the parts of his life he'd set aside to do his duty better. Letting go of that now was ... nothing in the world like scary.

He woke from a doze at the first flash of the lights by the communication screen. A yellow strobe; not a crisis, but worth getting him out of bed to deal with. "What is it, Ida?" he muttered.

"There's a data search buzzing through the 'Net with your name on it," Ida said. As a robot, she looked as good -- or bad -- as she did at any hour of the day or night. "And I do mean _your_ name. Started at the Pentagon, working outward. The Middleman before you put out some misinformation when you hired on, but I don't know how well it will hold. Whoever's come knocking is good, maybe as good as me. Now ask me where Mr. Snoopy is working out of, I dare you."

He was fully awake now, and didn't need to. "FATBOY."

"You want my opinion, missy's ex-honeybun wants her back. I told you he needed a free trip to Greenland if you two were going to do the horizontal mambo. Which, let me go on record, is still gross."

_I didn't ask your opinion._ Ida read his expression through the communications screen and stopped. The Middleman shook his head. "Tyler Ford is an unlikely suspect. He's never shown stalker personality traits -- or that level of computer expertise, more to the point -- no matter how aggrieved he feels."

"Meatbags." Ida shrugged off the foibles of human behavior. "Either way, FATBOY's got more information than you like. Could be somebody wants to hold your old algebra teacher hostage, if they realize you're soft enough to fall for it. Could just want to shake things up between you and the tootsie."

His past life had ugly things in it, especially if they came to Wendy whole and unexpected. There was only one answer to that. "Pull my dossier together, all of it. If she's going to learn about my past, I should be the one who tells her." _She's true as steel, she won't change her mind._ His stomach was churning with old guilt anyway.

---

Tyler woke with soft, instrumental jazz in his ears. He disconnected the under-the-pillow speaker from his up-to-the-second, full-featured U-Master. At the simplest level Manservant Neville's signature product was a straightforward, if oversized, MP3 player with video capacity. The difference was the two-way interface. U-Master headphones, either standard or Bluetooth, unobtrusively kept track of the user's blood pressure, heart rate, and brain activity. The information went back to the main U-Master and modified its choice of 'random shuffle' music and video.

A user who took ten minutes giving his unit custom settings would get cheerful music when he was depressed, energizing music when he exercised, calming music when he was drifting off to sleep. Users who tweaked the settings in more detail could _create_ their moods to order, through the U-Master, instead of simply reinforcing them. You saw people on the street all the time, these days, who clearly used their units 24/7. _Give your life a soundtrack_, just like the ad said. And the processor had plenty of capacity to expand. U-Master had made worldwide headlines, six months ago, when a high-end prototype had detected a heart attack in progress and saved its user's life by sounding an alarm. The medical division wasn't quite ready to ship products yet, but they already had millions of pre-orders.

Tyler's knuckles ached. As he massaged them, he mulled over how he'd spied on Wendy last night. _That felt weird_. But damn it, her sudden switch to _that guy_ still didn't make any sense. Tyler loved her, the real thing. He'd thought she loved him too. He needed to keep an eye on her, like he would for any good friend, and see if she'd flaked out into real trouble. He turned on his home computer and called up the webcam feature of his new spy gear. He automatically put on his Bluetooth headset and tuned it to his U-Master as he began working.

------

Wendy came to work after a night at home -- although 'work' and 'home' weren't exactly the categories, not any more -- in the fancy-occasion outfit she'd worn the evening before. Somehow, her choices of clean clothes had been down to that or emergency last-outfit-before-laundry-day sweats. Her clothes were migrating without her planning it. _The alien super-automato-clothes-cleaner beats the hell out of the washers in the basement, even if they didn't eat our quarters half the time._ She grabbed a fresh uniform in the locker room. The thing would never look stylish, even with her modifications, but it was pretty comfortable.

The Middleman was in the control room when she wandered in, working at one of the equipment consoles. No, _pretending_ to work. His incredibly-brave-in-the-face-of-death nerves had a habit of deserting him in icky social situations. Something like that had come up, or Wendy didn't know a thing about him.

Ida, on the other side of the room, was ignoring her existence again. And scariest of all, there was a steaming cup of coffee on the main conference table waiting for her. Wendy went for the caffeine. "All the world's dolphins have just evacuated from the planet," she guessed. "The Death Star is nearly within firing range. The sun has turned green."

"Nothing so pyrotechnic," he said. "The truth is it's ... personal, or at least one facet of it is. Someone inside FATBOY Industries is conducting an intensive data search -- it could hardly be more intensive without a HEYDAR of their own -- on our organization and me in particular." He looked embarrassed at using the pronoun. "The Middle secrets are well guarded, that shouldn't be a problem. But personal information, including classified military files ... they've drawn out a complete picture of my life up to joining the Middlemen. Which raises the question of why they want that information."

"It's the wanna-be," Ida stated. "Wanna be back in your pants, cupcake. I guess he's going for blackmail." The Middleman flinched a little; he had something to be blackmailed with, then.

"I'm not certain of Ida's interpretation," he said. "Mr. Ford's motivations aside, FATBOY as an institution has its own red flags. The majority of their business appears to be legitimate consumer goods, but the sheer speed of the company's growth is atypical. They were a small-scale electronics manufacturer ten years ago."

"And now Bill Gates trembles in his sneakers, got it." Wendy tried to keep her tone light. "But that's just the U-Masters; they're cheap and stylin' and fun. Don't tell me you of all people are against the free market rewarding innovation."

The mild teasing didn't change his tense expression. "Have you ever owned a U-Master?"

"I tried Lacey's after she first got it. Gave me a splitting headache. Apparently they really have to be one per person, if you're going to use the custom setups. So I got an Xbox. I like to manage my moods the old-fashioned way, by shooting zombies." She pantomimed a gun.

"Ida is counter-searching the origins and inner workings of FATBOY," the Middleman said. "It's taking time; their firewalls are impressive. This focus on my past is troubling. I have no close living relatives, Dubbie, and few friends who know I'm still alive. If blackmail is a motive here, it's aimed straight at you. My ... preference for anonymity, above and beyond what the role of Middleman requires, may have outlived its usefulness."

His expression was as blank as he could make it -- more guarded than she'd seen even in the heat of battle. He wouldn't look her in the eye. Wendy noticed another object on the table near her coffee, a file folder bulging with papers. Everything he'd hidden behind silence and duty and half-humorous evasions, stacked in one place. _This kind of naked doesn't suit you. Stripped down at gunpoint, more like._

"We are not doing this," Wendy said harshly. "Some kind of damn Dr. Gil confession session, all freakin' emo. I'll read that stuff if you want. Sometime. But I know _you_, the you you are now. And I figured out a long time ago, you wouldn't be wound up this tight unless you were afraid of some part of you cutting loose. You having secrets is no big secret." She drew a shaky breath, tried for a flippant tone. "So, did you kill anybody? Other than bad guys in the line of duty, I mean."

That shook him, in a good way; he looked a fraction more human. "More by luck than good intentions, but no."

"Treason, hijacking an aircraft, recording baseball games without express written consent?"

Ida laughed. "Maybe the reefer kid does have something going for her."

"Are you married to somebody?" That came out a little sharper than Wendy had intended.

He met her eyes directly this time; it warmed her, body and soul. "Engaged, never married," the Middleman said quietly.

"Okay, then." Wendy finished her coffee. "Work. Threepio thinks it's Tyler, using his FATBOY insider mojo for a personal grudge. I'd hate to think that. He's no more like that than you are. So maybe it's the opposite. Maybe FATBOY's using him. That was weird how he met Neville, crashing a car ten yards from where we were getting hot dogs."

"We have real-time holo of that, from your Middlewatch." His voice had recovered its normal resonance; Wendy was glad she'd turned down his confession. "Ida, let us see it." The robot snarled and pushed buttons. Wendy of two months ago moved across the main video screen, held hands with Tyler (Wendy-today winced a bit), talked music and bought hot dogs. She chatted with the vendor, oblivious, while a minor car accident happened behind them and turned into a scuffle. "Sensei Ping has training exercises for improving peripheral vision," the Middleman remarked. "We can go over those again."

"Thanks for the tip, Captain Gangster," Wendy snarled, half serious.

Wendy on screen noticed the fuss and went to help. They had better video, and clear audio, for Tyler's first conversation with his erstwhile boss. "No police report, no significant damage, no consequences to the man who attacked Neville," the Middleman said. "The incident could have been staged easily by a group with FATBOY's resources. What are the chances that a man in Neville's position would be crossing the city completely alone, not a secretary or a bodyguard in sight?"

"Lacey said he had two big flunkies in suits when he turned up at the loft," Wendy said. "I suppose he could have gotten scared by nearly getting beaten up, and changed his habits." Her tone gave the idea zero credence.

He nodded. "Or he could have left the bodyguards home so a Good Samaritan could save him. It's hard to imagine your Tyler meeting Manservant Neville face-to-face in any other situation."

_Not mine._ She didn't say it. "He barely went for the offer as it was. Well, you did say Tyler was sharp enough to do our job. That potential has to qualify him for other things, if somebody knew he had the mojo in the first place." Another train of thought caught Wendy's attention. "That squishy-monster, the first day _we_ met; you knew it was going to happen. You knew who I was before I got that temp assignment."

"The mutant outbreak was perfectly genuine," the Middleman said, too innocently. "It was impossible to intervene before the creature appeared. But given that context ... influencing your temp agency so that you were on the scene was perfectly justifiable. Someone less capable would have been sitting at that desk, if you weren't, and that bystander would have been in far more danger."

"Also you got to test my moves before I knew it was a test," Wendy said. "One of these days I'm going to kick you in the shins. Anyway. You were watching me as a prospect. You were watching him too. Did you see anybody _else_ watching him at the same time?"

"Brain cell number three goes into action," Ida said. "Not bad, actually." Her eyes went blank. "Nope, nothing in the surveillance reports. We quit looking at him when you didn't get killed first mission out of the box. Personally, I think we gave up too soon."

"Love you too, Ida," Wendy shot back. "If you or I tried to talk to Tyler about this -- about anything -- he'd tell us to go to hell."

"He'd also report the entire conversation to Manservant Neville, if FATBOY is using him," the Middleman said. "Nothing could make this situation worse."

Ida raised her head. "I've got something."

------

_He seemed so normal,_ the neighbors would be saying a few hours later. _No one had any idea he'd hurt a fly. _

He couldn't remember, now, when the plan had started taking shape in his mind. He had every detail perfect. Three different rifles for different ranges, boxes of reloads laid out in neat order, distances marked in his mind. The pistol for the last act, when they came for him; he wasn't worried about that. He wouldn't have set up his sniper's nest in his own house if he was. He _wanted_ them to know who he was. Besides, the terrain was too perfect to pass by. The attic window twenty-five feet off the ground. Only a few yards farther out, at the edge of his side yard, the sharp drop-off that marked the edge of the subdivision gave him another several yards of altitude. And the new elementary school, close to the cliff as if no one in California had ever heard of mudslides, only a few dozen yards further on. At this elevation he had God's own view of the whole place, including the complete absence of cover between the main building and the playground.

His U-Master was full of a dozen genres of music; nihilistic punk, death metal, folk tunes about blood and righteous revenge from the world's longest-running civil wars. He set the headphones to _mood enhance_ with the same care he'd taken with all his other tools, selected a rifle. He'd show _them_. All of them.

The music tangled and sizzled in his mind, volume soaring all by itself. He braced on the windowsill for the first shot. He tried to hold onto his rage, channel it, but the box was twisting it. Bringing up the self-hate that was only a hair's width below the surface anyway. His fingers wouldn't support the rifle. He tried to claw for the headphones but they wouldn't do that either; it was all too much. His brain was hot, heavy agony as if his skull were full of molten lava. He convulsed from the pain. Everything his hands hit, the boxes, the other rifles, his sniper's perch, intensified the hurt as if it were red-hot iron.

Only one cool, pain-free surface in his entire hellish world; the grip of his last-ditch pistol. It felt smooth, comforting; the only possible source of peace. His shoulders bumped against the sill of the open window and it was cool too, like spring water. He arched his back, leaning far out, bringing up the pistol like it was the only drink of water in a burning, burning world. His last emotion, balancing on the edge, closing his finger on the trigger, was profound relief.

------


	3. Chapter 3

Tyler Part Three

Summary: Crime scene investigation. Post-breakup angst. Ominous goings-on at FATBOY. Endorphins.

Tyler didn't reach his desk until nine-thirty that morning. He had a splitting headache. Aspirin washed down with coffee hadn't been as effective as he'd hoped. He was still getting organized and logged on when Manservant Neville paused at his desk. "Good morning, Tyler. Are you feeling all right?"

That could have been a veiled _you're late_ but wasn't. Tyler heard friendly concern. "Nothing serious, Chief. There was ... personal stuff. Then I didn't sleep well. I guess I'm not in the groove yet this morning. Bad dreams, or at least weird dreams." And instead of fading when he woke up, they'd stayed clear. "That meeting last week with the Shipstone people? It was like playing the whole thing back in my head, except this time I was _you_. Or sort of half-you. I could almost hear what you were thinking during the negotiations, like you were narrating it in my head. What it all meant, what they were trying to get, how you were going to handle it."

Neville smiled. "I'm glad the job is engaging your full attention. Learning how I think is exactly what I want from you. But I'm afraid I can't approve overtime for any work you do in your sleep." He looked down, turned more serious. "The next project is not as pleasant, I'm afraid. Have you seen or heard any news reports today? Steppecliff Elementary School."

Tyler grimaced. "I heard that on my car radio, about six stations in a row. Crazy guy was about to shoot up a school, but for some reason he skipped the killing other people steps and just killed himself. Good riddance."

"Absolutely. That's why ... well, I should keep myself out of American political arguments. There was a further development about a half hour ago, that hasn't reached the media yet. The dead man was wearing a U-Master. Giving his life a soundtrack, apparently. Even though no one else was hurt, it's not the best form of publicity right before the new firmware upgrades."

Pure human nausea came first; followed quickly by _we are in so much trouble_. "What do you want from me, boss?"

"I can't visit the crime scene myself. That would inalterably make FATBOY part of the news event," Neville said. "But I'm sending Mr. Kaniman from the legal department, just to observe. I want you to go with him. I expect you needn't say or do anything there; I just want firsthand impressions. I trust your instincts."

It didn't sound like fun, but that didn't matter. "Anything I can do, sure. When should I leave?"

"Now, if you can." Another man in a suit, vaguely Asian, came up behind Neville; he introduced him as Kaniman. "The sooner the better."

-----

It was, as expected, not much fun. Police cars clogging the street, barricades everywhere, white-faced parents picking up their children at the far side of the school. News vans crowding the perimeter as close as humanly possible. Other tv cameras circled overhead in two or three helicopters; the sum total was deafening. Neville's car dropped them off at the edge of the crowd. Neville's lawyer, presenting credentials and talking persuasively, worked through two uniformed policemen and a plainclothes detective before they were allowed inside the barriers. There wasn't much to see, just a tarp-covered splat near the base of the cliff, but forty or fifty police of all types were analyzing the entire area in detail anyway. Lab coats, ordinary suits, three or four types of uniform...

_That's not a police uniform_, Tyler thought, and _shit_. "I'm gonna mingle. Talk to the people in charge," he told the lawyer, and set off across the crowd.

_That guy_ in the rent-a-cop outfit and the gross hair gel was pointing some tricorder-looking object at the scene of the crime. Wendy, beside him, was slightly green but keeping her composure. "There's no chance of a detailed brain scan," he was saying as Tyler came into earshot. "Between the gunshot and the fall, those tissues are as dissociated as a doctor who smokes. But possibly a blood sample..."

"The _fuck_ are you doing here?" Tyler snarled. "You aren't cops."

"Mr. Ford." _That guy_ kept his voice level, although Tyler could see he didn't like profanity in front of girls. "I might ask the same question."

"Work. Somebody said something about a U-Master. But I don't see any 'international consulting' going on. I've got a funny idea that the cops would be surprised if I called their attention to you two. I should do that."

If Wendy had been hurt, seeing him, she was getting over it in favor of anger. "Don't be petty, Tyler. This is serious."

"Everything's serious with you, isn't it?" he snapped back. "Too serious to talk about, too serious to explain when you disappear for days at a time... I guess I got _that_ part figured out, though."

"How did you know about the U-Master?" the other man cut in.

"Not talking to you, Dad." Tyler reached out to shove him; Wendy's 'boss' was suddenly, seamlessly out of reach. Another smooth motion and he had Tyler's wrist instead. Tyler twisted back; it was like trying to move a statue. "Let go of me."

Worst of all, the bastard didn't even look upset. "How did you know he was connected to a U-Master," he repeated patiently. A nod indicated the row of houses at the top of the bluff. "The police only just discovered the main unit, up there at the primary crime scene. The headphones on the gunman _per se_ are too nondescript to draw any conclusions. Unless you came in a helicopter, and none has landed in the last fifteen minutes, there wasn't time for you to get here from FATBOY headquarters since the discovery. Is Manservant Neville involved in this?"

"He's not. You're nuts." Tyler pulled again; the older man let go his arm with an infuriating lack of concern. "He got a tip, we came straight here. I've got a lawyer with me." Wendy at least looked a little worried at that. "Yeah, a lawyer. FATBOY has a legitimate interest in bad publicity. What _are_ you the hell doing here?"

"We won't be discussing that," he said. Still calmly, damn him. "Personal animosities aside, human lives were at risk here. How do the U-Master and FATBOY fit into this scenario?"

"They don't. It's a nasty coincidence. You think I'd tell _you_ if there were something?" Tyler snarled back.

"You might. I've never heard of you being morally irresponsible."

The cool assessment was too much. Tyler pulled back to punch him in the head, SEAL or no SEAL. A dizzying blur ... Tyler's back hit the ground, breath knocked out of him. His arm was twisted in front of him, immobilized by pressure the wrong way on his elbow. Bad things could happen if he tried to get loose, that grip said.

Wendy's grip. _That guy_ hadn't moved at all. "What are you, a guard dog now?" Tyler snapped. "Or just a general b..." Sudden pain took his breath away.

"That's your rotator cuff," she said coldly. "Make nice and I'll let you keep it. It really was you, wasn't it? Internet-stalking us."

"I don't know what you're talking about." The other building ... but she'd said Internet. "You want to ruin your life with some freaky sugar daddy, it's not my problem." Nothing he said could move either of them. Tyler wasn't sure if he wanted to curse or cry, seeing that. "Who the hell are you?" he aimed at Wendy's new squeeze. "_What_ the hell are you? Both of you."

Tyler knew he wasn't going to get an answer. He didn't expect an expression that looked like respect. _That guy_ nodded slightly, and Wendy let go of Tyler's arm. "If you don't know, you should ask Manservant Neville." The guy pronounced it perfectly. He would. "I understand why you don't think well of me personally, but that doesn't whitewash _him_. I'll be blunt. We have reasons to believe substantial sections of Neville's business are neither legal nor moral. And he's involved in this." He gestured at the houses on the cliff, the one swarming with police and crime-scene teams. "You have a sharp mind. Use it. Find out what you're a part of before it's too late."

The advice sounded sincere and friendly; that was the infuriating part. Tyler gritted his teeth. "Why would I do anything you tell me? Why would I _ever_ want to be on your side, if there are sides here?"

"Because you were offered a job interview once. For what it's worth, I think you'd have done well." He fastened the what-is-it gadget to his belt. "We're done here, Wendy." She looked at Tyler across an immense distance, as if he were some kind of alien. Then she was gone.

-----

Wendy had learned to mask her reactions on the job, but the Middleman saw that she was shaken. He doubted it was the crime scene. He gave her space, letting her decide if and how she wanted to talk. She was silent until they were sheltered in their own car. "I never imagined Tyler could be that hateful," Wendy said very quietly. "Literally, full of hate. I knew he was ticked off. I knew he'd give me some hurt looks or leave the room next time I ran into him. I didn't expect he'd try to punch you out." She waved a hand. "Yeah, Sensei Ping. He couldn't tag either of us in a month of trying. But the Tyler I knew wouldn't have _tried_."

"It's not like him, from your descriptions," the Middleman agreed. "Together with the crime scene, that gives us two instances of aberrant behavior in one day connected to FATBOY."

"Maybe not," Wendy said. "Maybe I really did mess him up that badly."

"You couldn't put violence in a man's soul by hurting his feelings. Not unless it was there from the beginning." He didn't add, and hoped Dubbie wouldn't guess, that that was firsthand knowledge.

"I'm glad you were nice to Tyler. That made it easier to take. I'm just worried that he'll go back and tell Neville everything."

He slipped an arm around her shoulders. Wendy sighed and leaned into him. "I hope he will," the Middleman said. "I told you once that Tyler was too canny and alert to be safe around our secrets. Let FATBOY deal with the same problem."

----

Tyler's headache was back in force when he returned to his office. He'd had a lot easier time hating Wendy's squeeze when he barely knew the man. Calling Tyler intelligent and refusing to fight him didn't fit into that image. _And Wendy really loves him_. Tyler's jaw set. That was a reason to hate.

Kaniman the lawyer went into Neville's office first; Tyler was called in after he'd left again. "I understand there was some little unpleasantness with Miss Watson," his boss said sympathetically. "I'm sorry to hear it."

"I didn't expect to run into them," Tyler said. "Maybe I should have. That guy wouldn't answer questions, not even his name. He said you already knew."

"Your suggestion about his military background did bear some fruit, but nothing yet I'm comfortable sharing," Neville said. He seemed to be measuring every word. "What were they doing?"

"Waving gadgets around. That guy was talking about doing a brain scan on the shooter, like it was something they normally _would_ do, but it would be impossible."

"I should think so."

"He said ... he seemed to think you'd gotten me out there too fast. Almost before the cops at the crime scene knew there _was_ a U-Master. He said that proved you had something to do with the crime."

Neville smiled easily. "I've grown this company from nothing by acting faster and more decisively than others believed possible." His eyes sharpened. "Anything else?"

"Well. I took a swing at him. He was acting so damn _superior_, like he was doing me a favor talking to me."

Neville raised an eyebrow. "You're not hurt?"

"_Wendy_ knocked me down. She acted like either of them could kick my butt without breaking a sweat." Worse, she'd convinced him. The four-inches-taller-Navy-SEAL business was bad enough without Tyler's ex-girlfriend pounding on him too. "Chief, they have to have been breaking some laws, poking around a crime scene like that. I had the idea they used some sort of fake IDs to get through the barricades. Why don't we just tell the police?"

"I see no need to be that crude, or public," Neville said. "Leave it for the moment, Tyler; I'll see if I can think of a better approach. Back to your desk. We need you there just as badly." He was setting something up on his computer terminal as Tyler left the room.

----

Wendy walked straight through the central control room, when they got back to Middle HQ. She threw a glance over her shoulder, climbing the stairs. Ida muttered something offended and profane under her breath. "Behave, Ida," the Middleman said as he followed her.

He wasn't a naturally subtle man. But he'd made a study of Wendy's nonverbal signals. This wasn't just one of her come-hither moods; fighting Tyler had rattled her. If she wanted a comforting whole-body cuddle, she could surely have it.

She stopped at the landing down the hall from her bedroom. He slid his arms around her. Wendy leaned on him, head against his chest. One arm twined around his waist. After a while it slipped under the waistband of his pants in a distinctly non-platonic caress. _Cuddling with extra endorphins; well, if you insist._

The window shades were open in her room. The Middleman left them that way. Direct sunlight on her honey-amber skin was too good to miss. He unwrapped her like a gift. His stomach muscles trembled with need and nerves, just like every other time. He wondered if any man ever got over that aching teenage fear of looking foolish, of not pleasing a woman enough. _Maybe it's just me._ But the miracle happened again. She stroked him back, licked delicately at his ear. Made him welcome.

When they were both naked he knelt upright on the bed, Wendy straddling him chest to chest. He was as deep inside her as he could go, but almost immobilized by their combined weights; movement was up to her. Her butt muscles clenched and released under his hands, rocking her slowly at first. His mouth couldn't reach her breasts at this angle, he was too much taller. But her lips and the warm column of her throat were an easy reach. He concentrated on making her moan.

The more they learned about each other's bodies, the better it was. Wendy was building toward a big orgasm, from her flushed face and the catch in her breath. An instant before her release he came up, tipped her onto her back without losing the connection. He thrust hard on top of her, held her down with his weight. He was barely in time. Her feet lashed wildly in midair, hard enough to fling her light body off the bed if she'd been alone. Her hands and arms clutched his back, nails scoring him in one or two places. He barely felt it.

Her Middleman tried to move slowly, to prolong it for both of them. His self-control had limits. Her slick, hot muscles enfolded and squeezed him. He flung her legs over his shoulders and let himself go. Release like a lightning bolt turned him inside out.

He'd managed to fall down on the bed beside her, rather than square on top of her. That was well on its way to becoming a conditioned reflex. "Gaaa," he remarked.

Wendy laughed a little; she could be amazingly smug at moments like these. "Me too." She snuggled up against his bare side. "I was taking advantage of you, really. The whole thing, the case, him..." She made a face. "I wanted to feel better."

And had; he certainly couldn't detect any tension in her now. The Middleman ran his hand over her cheek, lightly, to convey that he didn't mind. Wendy laid her head on his shoulder. "How did you ever manage without me?" she teased.

"Pretty badly. Cold showers." He weighed the new no-secrets policy. "The occasional arrangement with Roxy Wasserman."

She sat up a little, stared into his eyes. "That's not like you."

"I needed someone I didn't have to lie to. She needed someone who wouldn't be killed if her succubus side got out of control. You were ... beyond any possible imagining, at the time."

For good and bad, she had changed from the impulsive young woman he first met. He watched her think it through. "No overlapping," Wendy said. A conclusion, not an ultimatum.

"Not by months." The agreement had been waning anyway, when Comet Wendy flashed across his emotional horizon. Wanting her, even without hope, had been better. But he hated to make excuses for himself. He kissed her instead, trying to convey the difference.

Wendy was too warm and sated to get angry. "Could be worse. Lacey asked me once if you were a virgin."

An undignified snort got out before he could control it. He studied Wendy's expression, decided she wasn't kidding. "Was this before or after..."

"Before. Lots before. She was crushing on you bad, at the time. I think she wanted to help."

He considered two or three croggled responses before settling on, "Very thoughtful."

Wendy patted him, radiating pride of ownership. "Don't worry. I'll protect you."


	4. Chapter 4

Part Four

Summary: U-Masters get blowed up real good.

In his dreams Tyler was moving through Manservant Neville's life again, from behind his boss' eyes. It felt more natural this time. Trivial things like sorting through e-mail, big ones like buying other companies. He was starting to anticipate Neville's trains of thought, his manner, like someone humming along to a familiar tune. Neville called up a file on his desk computer, hidden behind six layers of security Tyler had never seen before. He didn't know details of what Neville was doing, but he was flooded with satisfaction and anticipation. It felt like completing a successful business deal, but on a vaster scale.

Tyler stood in a black-and-chrome bathroom he recognized as part of Neville's penthouse apartment, ten floors above the office. He was shaving. When he looked into the mirror he saw Neville's dark eyes, not his own blue.

Sudden shift. The new images were distant, colors washed out, shorn of emotional context. It was like watching a bad videotape. A security camera videotape; Tyler vaguely noticed numbers in the corner of the image. A big house, a college fraternity or sorority by the Greek letters over the entrance. As Tyler watched _that guy_, coatless and rumpled, burst out the front door. Wendy was clinging to his back, fighting like a wildcat. They scuffled on the ground for a few seconds, broke and squared off like gunfighters. Wendy was weirdly competent at this, like she hade been beating up Tyler in his own person that afternoon. That guy was strangely _in-_competent, but his expression was eager and ugly. He wanted to hurt Wendy; he was looking forward to it.

Wendy kicked him in the crotch. _That guy_ punched her in the face, so hard that he knocked her unconscious. Tyler was back in his own body, or partly so, enough to feel himself flinch at the savagery of it.

Another image even more distant; a still photograph of somebody's suburban house. A crappy old car was smashed through the wall for two-thirds its own length. Tyler felt the same dread; he knew, wordlessly, that the crash had been no accident. He felt....

Awake.

------

Ida had gone out, overnight, and bought four new U-Masters for cash at four different stores. She'd set out a range of analysis gear on a big table in the middle of the main control room; the Middleman helped her organize it. He was up before Wendy, as usual. She staunchly refused to join his morning routine of a workout and a healthy breakfast. He tried not to nag, especially since annoying her before 8 a.m. and/or her first cup of coffee could be actively dangerous.

"This thing could be the size of a matchbox, if it just played mp3's like they claim it does," Ida said. In fact, the U-Master was a cube four inches on a side. She had the first one, turned off and without batteries, under a scanner that made it transparent one layer at a time. She pointed. "The hard drive with the exterior output, that little one, holds fifty hours of music. The _other_ drive has ten times the capacity, but the dork on the street wouldn't even know it was in there. It's got a completely separate wi-fi setup from the headphone. Probably uploads and downloads any time it's got a signal. Again, user hasn't got a clue." She touched a switch, and another section of the U-Master became visible. "Also there's this."

"That looks like a global positioning system," the Middleman said. "Give me a more detailed scan of the circuitry, Ida. Why do they need to keep track of where their customers are?"

"I'll have to give it some power."

"Fine." The Middleman finished his glass of milk and set it on the table.

"Yo, Boss." Wendy wandered in with a cup of coffee for herself and another milk. She set the full glass next to the empty one. "You're hitting that stuff a lot harder, lately."

"Milk is full of vitamins, calcium for strong bones, and high-quality protein for energy and stamina," he said blandly. "This is no time to take risks." He waited a split second after Wendy had spotted the sexual innuendo, and grinned at her.

Wendy was used to making all the jokes. "Oh? Somebody's full of himself."

On second thought, she snagged the glass of milk from him and drank about half of it. Couldn't hurt.

Ida rolled her eyes. "Don't make the robot hurl. Or your guns might not work when you need them. This thing's ready to fire up."

"Go on," said the Middleman.

Ida turned on the U-Master. It sat for two seconds, hard drives humming, and then caught fire in a shower of sparks.

"Pretty sure it's not supposed to do that," Wendy said.

"The internal GPS booted first thing, then sent a signal to rupture the batteries," Ida said. "FATBOY doesn't like this neighborhood. I can't take out the GPS without wrecking the whole thing, but I can keep it from reading a location." The Middleman nodded; Ida unboxed another U-Master and locked it in a wire mesh cabinet. "Ready."

The U-Master sat for _three_ seconds, and blew up with measurably more energy. "Kinky," Wendy said.

"These are ordinary U-Masters, or should be," he said. "It must be a hard-wired feature of the equipment. Ida, are there recorded cases like this among normal U-Master customers?"

The robot blinked briefly, linked to the HEYDAR. "Not a one."

"I think the U-Masters dislike our headquarters," the Middleman said. "It might work differently if the machine was turned on for the first time and configured somewhere else."

"We could borrow Lacey's," Wendy put in. And stopped, appalled. "Lacey. They know who we are, they know she's a friend of mine. She's in danger. And Noser, Noser's got a U-Master too. We've got to warn them."

"It'll be more credible in person," the Middleman said, and picked up his jacket. "Ida, keep working."

-------

Bill didn't have anything against his wife, really; she was just dull. Dull, and predictable, and always treating him as if he was dull too. She never seemed to think that other women would be interested in him, for example. That was insulting when you thought about it.

She was going to be insulted too, when she found out about Tammi. But that wasn't his problem. Bill brought up the household bank account on the Internet and clicked _Transfer Funds_.

The music from his U-Master was booming in his ears, suddenly. Bill turned the volume down but it didn't seem to help. The song had changed to a soppy country-western ballad about a good woman done wrong. Bill felt like the biggest bastard in the history of the universe. He felt the urge to text Tammi and call it all off right now,

_Don't be a dipshit._ Bill tried to pull off the headphones, but his fingers wouldn't coordinate right. He tried to bull on ahead with his money transfer, but he couldn't see the screen well enough. A clumsy mis-key logged him off the bank website entirely. He cursed out loud. He got the computer turned off, still cursing; his head was pounding.

Moisture on his face. When he reached up, his nose was bleeding. One damn thing after another today. He shoved tissue in his nose and left for work in a foul mood. He was still wearing his U-Master, but he no longer noticed it.

He was still wearing it two hours later when he collapsed at work. Bill's cube-mate called an ambulance, but the brain aneurysm had hit hard and fast. The EMT's didn't bother unpacking their equipment when they arrived. No one suspected anything unusual at the time.

------

The Middleman excused himself on the ground floor when they reached Wendy's building, saying something vague about security. She went up the freight elevator alone. She'd never been afraid to come home. Not the night a super-intelligent gorilla shot at her in the hallway with an automatic rifle, not the day she'd found a rogue Middleman chatting up her roommate. She was afraid now, and the laser gun on her hip didn't help.

Half the weight on her chest lifted when she saw Noser safe and sound in the hallway, tuning his guitar. "Hey, Wendy Watson."

She rushed up and grabbed him by both shoulders. "Noser, where's your U-Master? Never mind. The point is, don't use it. Don't wear it, don't turn it on, don't try to take the batteries out, don't _touch_ it. Leave it right where it is." She shook him. "Understand?"

"Understand," Noser said. "Also, ow."

"Sorry." Wendy let go. "I'm a little freaked out. Listen, is Lacey home?"

"Yeah. You might want to wait a while, though; she's got company."

"This is too important."

"It's Tyler."

Wendy spit out a word the Middleman never used. "His funeral." She rushed inside.

----

Wendy moved silently by habit, now. They didn't notice her at first. "I know you had a thing for him too," Tyler was saying earnestly. "But those guys don't walk around in _I hit women_ t-shirts. They come on charming at first, put the pressure on one notch at a time."

"I get it the breakup hurt," Lacey replied. "I do. But if you're really scared for Wendy, don't be. If anybody says 'how high?' when the other one says 'jump,' it's him."

"I've got the poor guy seriously 'whipped, all right," Wendy said in a hard, light voice. Tyler flinched when he heard her. Wendy came closer. A brochure headed _Warning Signs of Partner Abuse_ rested on the kitchen counter between Tyler and Lacey.

Tyler was babbling something, explaining or excusing; Wendy didn't listen. She visualized the complete Ninety-Seven Steps of Death in crystalline detail. It was the only way she could stop herself using them. "What part of 'get out of my life' did you not understand?" she snarled.

Lacey looked hurt; she hated conflict. "Dub-dub, I really think he means well. He's just mixed up."

Tyler had on a Bluetooth earpiece. The oversized cube of a U-Master hung on a belt attachment. Wendy's hand shot out like a cobra, grabbed the headset. Tyler yelped in real pain. She stomped it like a cockroach, swept the U-Master main unit into a terminal trajectory with one of the brick walls. "I came to say that those things are dangerous," she said. "I just saw a couple of them explode."

"You're insane!" Tyler rubbed his ear. "What are you, on drugs or something?"

"What am _I_? What are you ..." Wendy drew a hand back, but Tyler wasn't standing in front of her any more. She thought he was flinching, or ducking, but he kept going. Tyler sat down hard on the floor as if his legs had turned to rubber.

Wendy forgot to be angry at him. "Keep still." Tyler's temperature felt normal, pupils equal and responsive, pulse fast but steady. "What has Neville done to you?"

He pushed her hands away. "Nothing. I'm just a little dizzy."

"Can you get up by yourself?"

Tyler shook his head. "Stop trying to be my mom."

Wendy crouched down to his level. "This isn't normal. And you know it. Knocking off something like a Walkman shouldn't put you halfway into a seizure."

"That cost five hundred dollars, you know," he retorted.

"I'll write you a check." Wendy wasn't seeing many expenses these days, living largely at Middle HQ. She felt torn between leveling with him -- the Middleman was right, he was smart -- and not saying anything that might go straight back to Manservant Neville. "Tyler, I'm worried about you."

"Yeah. I'm worried about _you_, and nobody seems to care. One day everything's great, the next you're gone." The skin under his eyes was shadowed almost to the point of bruises. Wendy wondered if he'd been sleeping. "You never even told me what I did wrong."

"Nothing. It wasn't about you." Tyler looked like he'd been struck. Wendy wondered if that wasn't more hurtful than calling him every name in the book. "It started with my job. If I worked for the government, I'd be using words like ultra-top-secret." Surely Neville already knew that much. "I'm pretty much living two lives. I couldn't be fair to you, to _anybody_ when you only knew about the simple one." She looked across at Lacey. Her friend gave her an accepting, only slightly sad smile in return. But friendship wasn't romance. "He's my partner and my friend, he's seen me through hell ... I wound up falling in love on top of all that."

"You don't have to sleep with him to work with him," Tyler said doggedly.

_I've made promises._ Almost on impulse, like her overture to the Middleman in the first place. But sometimes an impulse was the subconscious making a decision really fast. She wasn't sure how to define her improvised vows in the (virtual) presence of a couple of hundred dead Middlemen. She did know they'd come to mean as much to her as they did to him.

Going back, even for Tyler, would be like sawing her own leg off. "I'm sorry I hurt you. That's on me, you know. I put all the moves on him, not the other way around."

"Doesn't matter." Tyler looked bleak; he turned his face away. Levered himself up by the edge of the kitchen counter. He jerked his arm away fiercely when Wendy offered to help. "I'll stay away from you, you stay away from me. I'll help my boss change the world. You do whatever it is you do. I'm not gonna wait around for you any more."

"It's a deal." Wendy couldn't think of a thing to say or do that wouldn't hurt Tyler all over again. Even _I'm sorry_. He seemed to agree; he left without a second glance.

----

The Middleman hadn't done a security scan in and around Wendy's sublet since she first started her job. It was overdue by any measure. He'd also noticed Tyler's car parked not far from Lacey's. He didn't want to act domineering or make an awkward situation worse. This was a good time to sweep around the building.

No explosives in a multi-block radius, no radioactives; that was pure routine. No alien tech... but there was unexpected human tech. Off-the-shelf gear. He'd never have noticed it if it hadn't come from a building that had stood empty and for sale for months. The old Viper Publishing building, straight across from Wendy and Lacey's windows.

Fresh scrapes on the keyhole at the main entry door; a key, not lock picks. The Middleman's own version didn't leave marks. Inside the sealed ex-warehouse was stuffy, the still air heavy with dust. Enough had precipitated to the floor that he could see faint, recent scuff marks.

He'd seen better surveillance posts. He'd used better. But it was an impressive effort for civilian tech, no expense spared. The line of sight would be just as good for sniping if anyone was so inclined. The Middleman's most thorough search turned up no weapons or signs any had been here, which was some comfort. The fingerprints his general-purpose scanner read and identified were no comfort at all.

He used the window himself, saw Tyler leaving Wendy and Lacey's apartment with every sign of emotional upset. A little physical shakiness, too. The two young women were safe and sound. He tracked Tyler by eye until the younger man left the building and drove away. It would have been a long shot, with a handgun, but he could have managed. Not that Wendy couldn't take care of herself.

Wendy talked to Lacey a while longer, hugged her. She threw a few things into a bag and left. When she looked for him, outside the front door, he raised his Middlewatch. "Across the street, the Viper building. Door's unlocked."

Once she was inside, Wendy grasped the observation post -- in essentials if not in fine detail -- as completely as the Middleman had. "Crap."

He appreciated that she used more euphemisms than outright strong language, these days. "Exactly. Mr. Ford's fingerprints are on most of the gear, positive ID. No one else's."

"They've done something to him." Wendy looked across through the window, looked away. "FATBOY. I grabbed his U-Master -- I was pretty p-peeved at him -- and he damn near fainted. That thing's in his _mind_. He's not responsible for this."

_He's responsible. Whether he's to blame or not._ Wendy started to pick up the video camera. "Leave that." The Middleman opened a compartment on his belt, attached coin-sized objects underneath each piece of Tyler's electronic equipment. "Leave everything just as it is. This is the first clue we've managed to find before instead of after an incident; we need the lead."

Wendy stared. "You said Tyler wasn't an enemy."

"I still hope he isn't. But he is an information channel to FATBOY and to Neville's intentions. We can't afford to waste that."

"I'll get Lacey on the phone. Noser's apartment's on the other side of the building; she can stay with him a few days."

"No," the Middleman said again.

"She could be in danger."

"I don't think so. There's no sign of weapons here; the sublet is only being observed. If no one's home, nothing to observe, the clue will lead nowhere."

"Lacey didn't sign up for that risk," Wendy said. "Not like I did."

"I know." His voice softened, reminding Wendy that he cared for Lacey as well. "It's the best we can do. She's already endangered by knowing us. The quicker we find out what FATBOY is doing, the safer she'll be."

Wendy thought it over, nodded. "There are things I hate about this job."

"You wouldn't be much of a Middleman if you didn't," he said.

-----


	5. Chapter 5

Part 5

(Author's note: the first few chapters of this are already up at Fictionwise. But after I finish the story I intend to go back and smooth some rough edges. I will re-post the final version at Fictionwise when I have it, so that may be a little different than the chapters that you guys have been getting here on the fly.

I would also like to dedicate this story to Buzz Aldrin.)

Summary: Personal initiative, present. Possible delays in software upgrades. Personal initiative, past.

-------

"Yo, Ida. I got you a present," Wendy said when they were back at Middle HQ. She unpacked the grocery bag she'd brought with her. "Tyler Ford's U-Master. It's kind of busted up, but it's definitely got the weird vibe. He just about passed out when I took it off him."

"That's gonna help," Ida said. Her expression stayed disdainful. "Must have been blind luck."

The Middleman gave her a reproachful look; Ida ignored it. "I've got leads, boss. One, I got past the self-destructs on one of those other U-Masters. The Faraday cage worked this time; when it didn't get a GPS signal it kept right on booting." A humming U-Master was enclosed in the same wire mesh cabinet they'd used earlier.

"Good work, Ida. Any theories on why?"

"Yeah. These things have the manufacturing date on the packaging. The ones that blew up were all made within the last two months; the one that didn't is over six months old. Must have been at the back of the shelf somewhere." Ida brought up magnified images of two computer chips on the HEYDAR screen. "The difference seems to be the firmware that ships with the thing. I couldn't recover any of the computer code from the ones that blew up, but I got a read on file sizes. The new ones have three times the built-in software of the older one. I think they shipped them all with the extra hardware -- the GPS, the hidden hard drive, the second set of wi-fi gear -- but they're taking longer to develop the software that uses all that stuff." Ida touched the case around the U-Master. "The second we take this one out of the Faraday cage, it'll automatically look for software upgrades. And my guess is, blow up too."

"The news could be worse," the Middleman said thoughtfully. "Whatever they plan to inflict on their customers isn't ready to begin, or not quite yet. Give us an analysis of Mr. Ford's."

Wendy set the latest broken U-Master on the table. Ida set up her scanners. "Oh yeah, this has all the bells and whistles," she reported. "Even more hidden data storage than the off-the-shelf versions; ten times as much. The same for the wi-fi bandwidth. Whatever they're doing, they're doing it to him in spades."

The robot pushed more buttons. "The firmware on this thing is hugely more detailed. Call them versions one, two, and three. Version one didn't do much. Version two, for one thing, explodes when it gets to our place. And three ... it looks like your hottie signed up as a beta tester."

"He's not my hottie," Wendy said absently. "I bet he doesn't know what they've done to him."

The Middleman said nothing; Wendy had the uncomfortable feeling that he didn't want to speak ill of a near-rival. "Either way, I don't think he's in control of what's happening to him," Wendy said. "I wish we knew what version the guy at the school shooting was running. Maybe his U-Master stopped him from killing people; maybe it started him _and_ stopped him."

"The police lab has it," Ida said. "Anything they learn, we can pull out of their reports, but it won't be much. They have crap equipment and they don't know what to look for. But I also have another lead."

"I couldn't crack the firewalls at FATBOY, but I've got their perimeter scanned to hell and back," Ida continued. "Real space around their headquarters and links to the Internet both."

"Too bad you didn't have that yesterday. It might have helped," Wendy commented.

"Hah." Ida pointed at her. "Plenty around here you still don't know, toots. I put the REPLAY on it."

"Retroactive Event Processing with Linear Analysis, Ytterbium-based," the Middleman supplied.

"We can run the sensors back in time thirty-six, sometimes forty-eight hours depending on sunspot levels," Ida said. "FATBOY did send out a modulated signal right before the guy at the school snapped. A wavelength nobody on Earth uses; it would take a dense palladium-iridium circuit to pick it up at all."

"You've checked the metals content on the U-Masters." The Middleman wasn't asking a question."

"On the nose. All three versions have it," Ida said. "That gear may be human-built, but no way it was human designed. FATBOY has access to alien tech at a minimum, maybe actual off-world help. Either way, it breaks the Wilderman Treaty."

Wendy knew she was expected to give a sidekick line like 'Really? What's that?' "Just tell me."

"There are very strict rules about what information and materials alien visitors can bring to a low-technology planet like the Earth," the Middleman said. "That's why UFO crashes never leave any proven debris. Sometimes they clean up their own litter, sometimes we do. Our culture as a whole is too primitive to survive that kind of first-contact trauma."

"Who signs these treaties in the first place?" Wendy asked.

"What are you, dumb?" Ida jeered. "He does. Under galactic law the Earth is ... well, the closest English would be private property. Big guy there owns it, or whoever's in his job. Regular governments don't come into it."

Wendy could tell when she was being kidded. And she wasn't. "We were dealing with an actual evil _Titanic_ tuba, and you didn't think to mention you're king of the world?"

"Doesn't make you the queen," Ida retorted.

"The Middle organization holds title to the planet under alien law," he muttered, embarrassed. "It's a legal fiction. That way we have the right to sign treaties, declare war, that sort of thing. You remember the Clotharian business. Whoever's Middleman is held accountable for Earth actions. There's not any power involved."

"Just the responsibility," Wendy said. "That's just the sort of thing you would do."

A different image came up on the HEYDAR screen. "Score," Ida said. "There was a second alien-tech signal about seven a.m. today, aimed at a suburban neighborhood. We didn't have any correlations; no police calls to the site, stuff like that. Still nothing on the scene, but the guy who _lives_ at that address dropped dead at work two hours ago. Massive stroke." She listened to her data feeds. "He got to the hospital DOA. Also, his wife and mistress got to the emergency room at the same time. That's how the cops got onto it; one hell of a cat fight." She snickered. "I've got video footage."

"The mission, Ida," the Middleman scolded.

"You're no fun. Dead two-timing guy owns a U-Master, and he was wearing it when he died. The hospital lists it in his personal effects."

"Scanners live in vain!" the Middleman said. "Two people have received these signals via U-Master; and at least one signal led to extremely aberrant behavior. And neither survived the experience."

"I'll nail the next signal in real time, if there is a next one," Ida said. "Guaranteed. I don't know if that will give us time to do anything about it."

----

FATBOY headquarters kept dozens of top-of-the-line U-Masters on hand, for tech-reviewer samples and gifts. Tyler Ford took the top box out of the stack in the supply cabinet and took it back to his desk. He set the headset aside, and plugged the main unit into his computer.

He had all the bandwidth in the world, since he was on the interior FATBOY network. The new machine found his account in seconds and started configuring itself. That was one of the selling points compared to smaller, generic music players. A U-Master user who replaced his unit didn't have to choose between pirating music or paying for it over again; he had lifetime digital rights. Tyler's unit had, among other things, a complete collection of all his own songs except "Dreams of Monica." On impulse, he added that one too. It was all pretty much the same to him these days. His own music didn't resonate for him any more. He certainly couldn't stay upset about Monica when Wendy had hurt him so much more deeply and recently.

He picked up the headset by habit when the U-Master was ready to go. Hesitated. Wendy had screwed him over, but she wasn't dumb; she had a point about his reactions. Now that he thought about it, he'd drifted into the 24/7 U-Master habit since he'd been here. A break wouldn't hurt him. It might clear his head a little.

Tyler logged into the main network and started doing some real work. Nothing specific in mind, just earning his paycheck. If he was dabbling almost randomly throughout the whole network, that was just natural curiosity. Anyway, learning all about how the company worked was his job.

_You have a sharp mind. Use it. Find out what you're a part of before it's too late._ But Tyler was _not_ doing what that guy had told him to. Just curious.

The CEO office suite, Neville and his five or six closest staffers including Tyler, had its own node on the network. Tyler noted that his boss wasn't online right now, at least not from his desktop. The machine was on, though. Tyler looked idly for shared files that he could reach from here.

Manservant Neville's computer demanded a password. Tyler, half his mind elsewhere, tapped it in and continued.

The whole company was racking up major overtime, trying to get the latest U-Master software updates debugged and ready to go. The release date was three weeks out, but that was an eye-blink in software development terms. Tyler noticed that the big boss had spent a lot of his own time on the beta files. He knew Neville had been a wizard programming geek when the company started, but that was several software generations ago. He had to respect a guy who would work that hard to keep on top of things.

That was the kind of thing that Wendy would never understand. Neville didn't just run this company for the money; it was his passion. He was here to change the world, and Tyler was proud to be involved.

Tyler's watch, the one Manservant Neville had given him, warmed and buzzed almost imperceptibly on his wrist. He didn't really register the change. His headache had started up again.

He took a look at the new firmware, but Tyler wasn't much of a computer guy himself. The raw computer code was gibberish to him. If they'd put in any lines of documentation, for the nerdly-impaired, he couldn't find that part of the file.

"Good afternoon, Tyler," a mild British voice said behind him.

Tyler jumped and minimized the window on his computer screen. _Great job playing it cool. _"Hello, boss. What's up?"

"Just another day at the salt mines." Neville tapped a key on Tyler's computer keyboard; the window re-opened. "You've never been interested in programming before."

"It's our main product, even more than the U-Master hardware," Tyler said quickly. "I thought I should at least try."

"That's admirable. In the long run, I do want you to act as my alter ego," Neville said. He didn't smile. "But I'm a bit concerned that you felt you had to go behind my back. I don't know if you've realized exactly how crucial I mean you to be in FATBOY's future. Anything you want to know, anything you want access to, just ask. You've got the keys to the kingdom." Neville's tone sharpened. "Did anyone tell you to take a direct interest in the new software?"

"No. Of course not. I mean, who would?"

Neville's dark eyes snapped with real anger. "Don't lie to me, Tyler. I won't abide that. And I think I deserve better, especially in contrast to people who've done you personal harm." He shoved Tyler aside, brought up a different program on the screen with a few brisk raps. "You haven't paid much attention to the details on your paycheck, have you? I had you fully vested in the corporate stock options program the day you came to work here; I have that much confidence in you. Even if I never paid you another dime's salary you'd never have to be in want again. Not as long as FATBOY stays in business, anyway. I have faith in you, and I thought you had the same for me."

"I do," Tyler protested. "I have. It's just ... that _was_ weird, the guy going crazy and dying with his U-Master on. And I had a pretty odd reaction myself when Wendy broke mine."

"There's that as well." Neville picked up the U-Master on the desk. "This is the replacement; what happened to your original? The hardware itself."

"Nothing. It was smashed up; I guess Lacey or Wendy threw it away at their place. It wasn't good for anything but trash." Tyler was becoming alarmed. Instincts he barely knew he owned were screaming at him. "Chief. Why did I flake out like that when I suddenly lost my U-Master? It was almost like _I_ was a computer, and the interface locked up."

"You were under a lot of emotional stress," Neville said easily. "The human mind is a peculiar thing."

The instinct-yelling was deafening. "Boss. Mr. Neville." Tyler felt a little fear, but mostly genuine loss. He did like the man, damn it. "How do you know that? I haven't told anybody where I went, or who I talked to. You've got no idea what conversation I had ... at least, you shouldn't."

"You're very stressed, I can see that. Maybe I've asked too much of you too fast," Neville went on as if Tyler hadn't spoken. "A change is as good as a rest, they say. I dictated a lot of letters this morning; you can help Cora transcribe and send them out. I'll send the files to your U-Master."

"I ... don't want to do that. Sir. I'll do the work, sure, but not on U-Master. It seems like I'm plugged into the thing all the time these days. I'd rather take a break from it."

Neville did smile. It looked wrong. "Don't you want to be an advertisement for your own goods? Every little bit helps our stock prices."

Tyler was sliding his chair back. "Honestly, I'd much rather..."

"_Sit still_," Neville said. His voice was booming suddenly, filling the room; Tyler felt dizzy. Another second, and quick fingers fitted the headset over his ear. The room seemed to recede. Suddenly Tyler couldn't move, or couldn't want to. It was all too much trouble.

Neville had the main body of the U-Master in his hands, working with the controls. "You're making me sad," he said. "I've given you everything, Tyler -- work, money, respect, a place in my company. Even my own memories. I need a right-hand man I can trust absolutely. With the combination of your native talents and some ... suitable motivation to treat my interests as your own, you could have been that person. Stand up."

Tyler moved like a robot. "Maybe it's not too late," Neville continued. "You said you wanted to make a better world, after all. That's all I'm doing. You might see my side of the case on its merits." Tyler tried to get to the door. "Now, now." Neville pushed another button; the headache clamped down like a vise.

"That U-Master is far better synchronized to your mental patterns than the general test rigs were," Neville assured him. "But this is still as far as I dare go. I'd hate for you to be hurt, Tyler. I've come to think of you as something of a son. Look at me. Answer."

"Okay, boss. Neville." Tyler couldn't look away.

The older man relaxed a bit. "There we are. You've had a bad day, Tyler. Several bad days. You've been in conflict with some very dangerous, very frightening people; no wonder you're upset. And they know where you live, don't forget." He leaned in closer. "You're very tired, Tyler. Very distressed. I want you to stay here. There's a guest suite in my penthouse, a very comfortable one. Take the rest of the day off, go lie down. Maybe you can sleep a bit. Maybe you can listen to some music." The device started trickling a song from _Phantom of the Opera_ into his ears, in mid-verse. _You've already decided_...

"Kind of tired," Tyler conceded. He was being a fool about this. Neville was a friend, Tyler could trust him. The pressure in his head eased off at the thought. "I could rest."

"Good child," Neville soothed. "Go on up, then. Let yourself in; you're fingerprinted as an authorized user. See how much I trust you. Sleep as long as you like."

Tyler drifted toward the private elevator, all thought of resistance gone. He carried his U-Master in both hands. He was vaguely aware of Manservant Neville, behind him, watching him with an expression of controlled fury. "Right. That's _it_," said Neville, and headed the opposite direction.

-----

Wendy Watson was a hardened comic-book heroine, or becoming one. Even so, four hours waiting for an enemy signal had dulled her sense of urgency. She'd done some rough sketches on a legal pad, given them up when nothing inspired her. She looked around the Middle control room. Her Middleman's dossier folder was still out in plain sight. Ida had moved it to her own desk, in a protective arm's reach, but she hadn't had the nerve to get rid of it entirely. Maybe she had orders. "I'm bored. How about you, your Majesty?"

The Middleman frowned. "That's in poor taste, Dubbie."

"You're just mad because I've got a whole new shtick whenever I want it. Your Highness-ness, your Honor, your Worship. Han Solo always had good lines." She grinned evilly. "Am I bugging you?"

"Yes, Dubbie." He sounded like a babysitter. "Find something productive to do."

"Hey, it doesn't have to be royal titles. I could always just go look at your real name." She waved at the folder. "Start going Hi Mike, hand me that metric pattern buffer Mike, hey Lacey, Mike said hello."

The Middleman looked puzzled. "Mike?"

"I've had to think about it, you know," Wendy said. "In case I needed a name for you with no lead time. I went with Mike Middler, as in some relation to Bette Middler. It works. It could be a real name."

He relaxed. "That's not very imaginative."

"You didn't exactly give me much to work with."

A chime sounded; someone had entered Jolly Fats Wehawkin's Temporary Employment Agency's front office. "Damn. Five more minutes and I'd have closed for the day." Ida got to her feet. "Oh. Crap." The face on the foyer security camera was all too familiar.

---

Neville didn't have to wait long. A dumpy, aging woman in a hideous print dress came out of the main part of the office. She walked as if her feet hurt. "Well, if it isn't the international electronics magnate and green-friendly billionaire, Manservant Neville, gracing our obscure establishment," she said in an absolutely flat screw-you tone. "We would be delighted to assist your corporation with its temporary-employee needs in any way we can, especially since you have more money than God. How may I help you?"

Neville smiled genially. "I have some fairly specialized needs that my human resources department can't meet. I want to hire someone to fight evil. So that, in a manner of speaking, I don't have to."

"I can lock this place down like a bomb shelter in ten nanoseconds, and nobody would ever find the body," the secretary warned.

He looked mildly pained. "Is there someone else I can talk to?"

They'd clearly been listening. They came out of the back office into the foyer at once, Wendy Watson trailing a bit behind and to the side of her employer. The man seemed even bigger than Neville would have expected from his height and weight statistics. He looked like solid muscle, and moved with a cool-eyed air of homicidal competence.

Neville smiled a bit more; he'd been winning brains-versus-brawn competitions all his life. No need for introductions on either side. "It's an honor. My protégé Tyler Ford has such strong views about you, I simply had to make the acquaintance firsthand."

"What do you want?" The Middleman said without emotion.

"Just a professional courtesy. Although I must say your staff has done nothing so far to make me feel welcome." Neville shifted a bit closer to seriousness. "I know you take a rather direct approach to your calling, slaying monsters and fighting aliens and so forth. Your strength is as the strength of ten, et cetera. I have no intention of getting into fisticuffs with you," Neville's look included the young woman, "either of you. So I thought I'd better drop by and say, don't."

"Or else what?" Wendy shot back.

Neville adjusted his game plan a bit; she was apparently closer to an equal partner than he'd expected. "That's a bit of a complex explanation. You certainly know that I'm preparing to roll out version two of the software that controls my U-Masters. We've had one or two beta tests already."

"We know you've killed people by influencing their minds," the Middleman said.

"I didn't say they were _successful_ beta tests. But we're making progress. I wanted to say that in return for your noninvolvement, I'm prepared to scale back the testing process. Even if it means I miss my upgrade release deadline. Lower level tests that would do little to no damage to anyone. My company's prestige can survive a delay; I'd quite frankly rather ship the software right than fast."

"Even if the deaths so far have been incidental, you've killed. And you're holding the lives of thousands of other people in your hands."

"Thousands?" Neville looked offended. "I've sold five _million_ of the version two hardware in the United States alone, and at a respectable profit. All ready and waiting for the new software. You don't think I'd let you learn about my plans too soon, do you? I'm not a fool."

He was buying it, or enough so that he hadn't tried to attack Neville on the spot. "Then what are you doing?"

"Nothing very dramatic. I'm not going to fill the streets with zombies or rule by murderous whim from some sort of super-fortress. That strikes me as time-consuming and uncomfortable. I think that conquering the world in such a way that people _notice_ is unacceptably shoddy. For the most part, I'm perfectly content with the levels of wealth and power I already have. I just want a bit of an edge, to maximize my options. Just hang back a bit, let me perfect the system. The most I've even considered on a widespread basis is just a touch of docility; the crime rate would certainly go down. Wouldn't it be ironic, if I saved more human lives than you ever have?"

"You're disgusting," Wendy Watson shot out.

"Oh, please. Not one-hundredth of one percent of users will ever be affected in any way they'll be aware of. What's the harm?"

"Violation of human free will is the worst possible harm," the Middleman said. "And even if you're telling the truth about your current plans ... it wouldn't last. Power corrupts. In the end you would have armies of zombies, or something like them -- and you'd enjoy it."

"So. Then we'll do this the hard way." Neville was looking forward to it, in his heart of hearts. "You should know that a version of the new software is ready to go at an instant's notice. Not a _very_ safe version, even if we send no commands at all. If we have to roll the program out too quickly we've estimated, hmm, a minimum attrition of five thousand randomly distributed users."

"You mean you'll murder five thousand people."

Neville shrugged at the re-wording. "That's why I'm telling you this. If I remain alive and well, the problem doesn't arise. But I have to log into my office terminal regularly, at least once every twenty-four hours, to keep matters in that happy state. So don't get any heroic ideas about detaining me or killing me."

Neville spread out his hands. "That's all I wanted to say. Practice some discretion, just in my specific case. Apart from that, I'm completely in support of your mission statement. Go on protecting us all from alien invaders and mad scientists and so forth. I don't want anything bad to happen to the Earth or the human race. Not now that I own them."

The Middleman wanted to attack him on the spot, Neville knew. He could almost feel his own bones breaking. But he'd spoken pure truth from the moment he walked in the door, and the Middleman in turn knew _that_. "Get out," he said in a voice like stone.

"Oh, very well." Neville turned. And stopped again, two steps short of the door. He simply couldn't resist. "One more thing, Miss Watson. Personal question. I know you haven't been best pleased with Tyler's ... less characteristic ... possessive behavior lately. Certainly understandable; you're a strong-minded woman. But how do you reconcile that principle with ...." He gestured broadly toward their side of the front counter.

Confusion on the girl's face, utter blankness on the Middleman's. Neville couldn't help smiling; he was surprised this particular weapon was still available for his use. _Wonderful_. Perhaps the old saw about power corrupting did have some merit.

Neville turned to face them directly, face set in a look of friendly sympathy. "You don't know? Well, I suppose anyone with sense would keep it from you. He tried to kill his high-school girlfriend because she rejected him."

---


	6. Chapter 6

Part Six

Summary: Naming names. A shot of redemption. A shot of escalation.

For Sgt. Bothari, in loving memory.

Previously in "The Guy in Second Place" --

LJ break for spoilers

_Confusion on the girl's face, utter blankness on the Middleman's. Manservant Neville couldn't help smiling; he was surprised this particular weapon was still available for his use. Neville turned to face them directly, face set in a look of friendly sympathy. "You don't know? Well, I suppose anyone with sense would keep it from you. He tried to kill his high-school girlfriend because she rejected him."_

---

Wendy almost couldn't process the words as English. She was trying to find some weird alien meaning. Manservant Neville smiled, and this time there was nothing saintly about it.

The Middleman looked exactly as if he'd been shot. Wendy waited for him to call Neville a liar. This would be a good time to break his rules and use some profanity for emphasis. Hitting Neville would be okay with her too. Waited. For him to deny it. Realized with nightmarish slowness that he wasn't going to. The accusation was true, or at least too close to true for the Middleman to defend himself.

_The next time you want to tell me something, so it doesn't bite me in the ass as a total surprise, I'm going to listen._

"Get out." Wendy's voice was harsh, guttural. Her hand rested on her gun; she prayed Neville would give her an excuse.

He read her like a book. "As you wish." Neville's cheerful, horrible smile didn't shift. "_Buena suerte_, then. You may need it." He turned and walked away, a spring in his step.

She and the Middleman were alone, then, with nothing to look at but each other. His lips moved. Wendy recognized the beginning of _Dubbie_, but it died away without a sound. _That might be the last time he says it, or I let him say it._ Worse, her hand had automatically stayed on her gun. She couldn't make it let go at first. He saw the hesitation, flinched.

She wanted to cry. She wanted him to hold her and promise her the world. That wasn't going to happen today. "Fucking _talk_," Wendy snapped.

The silence stretched like slow torture. There was no place to sit down in the foyer. The 'office' door to the street was unlocked in the daytime, anyone could walk in as Neville had.

"It's true. Or close enough." Something was gone from his voice, the resonance that made him sound heroic and in control no matter what. "I drove my car into her family's house at two in the morning. Someone could have been killed, blind luck they weren't."

He'd only spoken once about that period of his life, before this. _Which should have told me something_. "The girl with the mix tape," Wendy said.

He nodded. He wouldn't look up. "She was a year behind me in high school, but a lot more grown up. She wanted a future. After I graduated I just hung around town with my friends, worked a little. Drank. We'd argue, I'd storm off. She finally got angry enough, and blunt enough, to make me understand it was over. I had the most awful temper ..."

Wendy held absolutely still, but he could read her reaction anyway. He always could. He drew himself up with a kind of proud despair, unwilling to make excuses. "You guessed the other day, there's a reason I won't be anything but the Middleman. I don't dare."

"But you're ... _nice_." Even Lacey had sensed that he wasn't _all_ nice, but that didn't matter. That shining integrity was what Wendy had fallen in love with; his handsome face or muscles couldn't begin to compare. Not even the courage and cool intelligence that made him so good at his job. She'd gone looking for him in an alternate world saturated with evil because she _knew_ he was good at the core, absolutely trustworthy. And the other version of him had lived up to that, in spite of surface differences.

She focused on what she did know, did trust. "That story about your football buddy, in high school. You were a good guy then."

"To my two or three best friends, yes. That's a moral bar almost anyone can meet. It took me ... longer than it should have, to extend that respect to a larger circle." Wendy could see the effort it was costing him to keep looking at her. That same integrity; if his past was going to shatter them apart he would do it himself, to her face. "I'd better tell it all."

"Yeah." _I've made promises_. Wendy had never imagined that keeping them could become an effort.

"Back then. I'd already done plenty of things I could have been arrested for. Under-aged drinking, getting in fights ... people let it go. I thought it was because I was invincible. The real reason was my father. He was probably the most beloved man in town, not that I'd ever made the connection. He'd been a lawyer there longer than I'd been alive, never treated anyone unjustly ... no one wanted to tell him. Maybe he didn't want to hear. It was just the two of us by then, my mother had died. Then I committed a full-scale felony and no one could pretend any more."

Wendy stared at the floor. She could see in peripheral vision he wasn't looking at her, either; he'd lost his nerve. _Another first_. Muscles tightened in his jaw. "Her parents agreed to drop the charges if I'd leave town and stay gone. Again for my father's sake. So I did. I'd never seen him cry before ... That's how I came to join the Navy."

That should have been the hard part, but the anguish in his voice hadn't gone away. Wendy looked at him more directly, saw his face absolutely rigid. "But you were good at that. You were in the SEALs." Because he'd said so, and no matter what else happened she couldn't imagine him a liar.

The half-compliment was no comfort to him. "I did the job. I followed the rules." As if he meant sitting in an office, instead of one of the most physically and emotionally demanding careers in the world. "But it wasn't enough, because it was still based on a lie. If not for that false clean slate -- if they'd had the complete story -- I wouldn't have been allowed in the service let alone an elite unit. My C.O. didn't know, or my new friends, but I knew. I didn't deserve their respect. Couldn't."

His expression changed a little. "There was a woman I wanted to marry. I didn't have the courage to tell her either." One hand moved, a gesture like something falling away. "In the end the fact that I was keeping a secret was just as destructive." The hand fell to his side.

"And the more creditable parts of the history, you've heard. The previous Middleman _did_ know what I'd done." His tone begged her to accept that, if nothing else. "No lies of omission. It was my chance. For most Middleman, giving up a personal identity is a sacrifice. I couldn't wait. I was sick to death of who I was."

And he ... she was only thinking _he_, Wendy realized. Not 'the Middleman.' She tried to fit the new knowledge in the same skin as the man she fought beside. The man she loved. The man who'd been inside her last night in bed, a slow sensual dance, when all that time... Wendy shivered.

He followed the train of thought on her face. Wendy knew it would hurt him. Cared that it would hurt him, that must be worth something. His reaction wasn't dramatic, only a whole-body ... she would have said slouch, for anyone else. This nightmare wasn't sudden for him. He'd carried it all his adult life. Must have feared this from the moment they met, let alone the moment they touched. The endless evasions, the refusal to allow himself any semblance of normal relationships, made so much more sense.

"I should have told you a long time ago. Even if you didn't need to know it about a comrade-in-arms, you deserved to know it about a lover. I was too afraid. And I'm sorry."

His weight shifted, chin lifted a little. Wendy had the feeling she could come back in ten years and find him still waiting there. Or she could pull out her gun and incinerate him, and he wouldn't lift a finger to stop her.

Now she could imagine the surly, dangerous teenager under the surface. Crammed in uncomfortably with the soldier and the hero. Her lover with the sunlit smile ... had to be in there too. Or else he never had been.

Finish it. "What happened to the girl with the mix tape?" Wendy had to work hard to get her voice above a whisper.

"She stayed in town and got married, I understand. A dentist. They had children." A different pain crossed his face; Wendy had never realized that was something he wanted.

"What happened to your dad?"

"I didn't see him for five years. That was hard. A few visits later on, when I was stationed in the country. He knew I was serving, that I hadn't stayed completely dishonorable. In the end I think he wasn't ashamed of me. He died a few months before I took this job."

Which had happened, Wendy recalled, after he'd disobeyed an order that would have killed his SEAL team. "Would he have approved of what you did? When you saved your men and punched out your CO."

"That was the standard I was trying to live up to," the Middleman said softly.

Wendy's instincts and her nerves were fighting each other. "What was your name?" A last-second change of verb tense. She already knew the answer to _what is_.

"Clarence Peter Conrad. Junior."

Too much, too fast. Wendy couldn't sink into his arms, into their bed, as if nothing had happened. But the idea of letting him go, even partially, made her want to scream like a lost baby.

"You don't look a bit like a Clarence," Wendy said. _At least we still have saving the world. _ "Boss."

------

Ida had heard it all. It was a given that Ida could or did monitor everything that happened in the building. She'd shut off the links to their private rooms, but she'd made a point of saying it was because meatbags in general and Wendy in particular were disgusting.

He disappeared after they locked up the front of the office and returned to the main control room. Giving her time and space to think, Wendy knew.

Which meant he hadn't gone up to their ... to her room. Or probably his own, which was on the same floor. The gym, maybe. Wendy could imagine him racking the weights to his personal best or a little higher, using the physical burn to drown out emotional distress. She hoped it helped.

He'd always shown her that kind of respect, slamming on the brakes at the edge of her personal space at the slightest hint. She'd assumed that was inborn goodness. Maybe it was a habit he'd had to work very hard building. _Does that count less than if it's effortless? Or more?_

Ida had been ignoring Wendy's existence, which she did half the time anyway. Apparently robot's tempers could run out just like people's. Now she slammed a scanner down on her desk. "I told him from day one you were no good. I knew you were a shallow little bitch, but I didn't know you were a _bitch_."

Wendy's eyes stung. She didn't have a soul on Earth she could talk this out with, she realized. Ida wasn't strictly a person but at least she had the context. "I didn't do anything."

"Yeah. And you did it pretty damn hard, too." Ida sneered back. "The number of times he's saved your skanky life, even if you don't count world-saving before he met you..."

"I get it. _I get it._ I don't mind disintegrating you if that's what it takes. You'd be back tomorrow anyway." Wendy didn't think she was bluffing, though her head was spinning too hard to be sure of anything. "Back off."

"You wanna be alone, you can _be_ alone, toots," Ida shot back. "Enjoy." She stumped off toward the archive room.

The control room had an echo, when it was this empty. Wendy hadn't noticed before.

Of all their intimacies, and the total was impressive for only twenty-nine days, it was the first and simplest that tore at Wendy's heart now. She'd held out her hand. Actions spoke louder than words. _I love you, you love me, I can't pretend not to any more. Come to bed and I'll make it better_. She'd made the invitation absolutely clear, because she knew his rigid self-discipline would never have let him make the first move. She'd held out her hand, and he'd taken it. Had never really let go, on a level that meant more than literal touching. The gentle caresses, the sweaty gymnastics that meant the same thing at a higher volume. And all that time...

Looking back, the Middleman had gone out of his way to frighten her off on her first mission. Threats against her life if she talked about hentai monsters, letting her and her temp agency think she was an arson suspect. Looking back, she'd never believed a damned word. Hard to say why, when she'd hooked up with a heavily armed total stranger. But she hadn't. Nothing, battle and apocalypse and the gates of the Underworld, had shaken that confidence until today. Now ...

She didn't know if she could go back to him, heart and soul, with the same complete teamwork they'd had this morning. She could try, but it would _take_ trying. And he'd see the effort and feel guilty about it. She might give her honest best and still not get that seamless bond back.

For that matter, how about that self-discipline? The way that he'd always been commanding and decisive on strictly Middle-matters but agreeable to the point of apathy on anything personal. She'd had to make every first move in the relationship. It had driven Wendy nuts sometimes. She and her mother had negotiated much of her teen years at the top of their lungs; she was used to a certain amount of drama. The phrase _stand up for yourself_ had crossed her mind, once or twice, when she couldn't get the Middleman upset about anything. _Maybe he's not mellow. Maybe he's careful._

He'd never said _who I am_ on the rare occasions that she could get him talking about himself. It was always some phrasing like _the man I choose to be_. Wendy should have noticed.

There was no outcome here that wasn't going to be hard for at least one of them. All she could decide -- and it was her decision -- was which pain for who.

---

The Middleman's shoulder muscles were screaming at him for the last ten reps. He made himself finish, with textbook form; otherwise it didn't count. Set the weight machine back to zero, threw his sweats in a laundry chute. The gym had its own shower; he wouldn't have to risk bothering Wendy in the locker room or their ... her bedroom.

He almost couldn't remember what it had felt like being Pete ('Clarence' was Dad) that muggy summer night. The rage and frustration and embarrassment that had seemed so world-shattering at the time felt trivial, seventeen years later. What stayed in his mind now was the _shamed_ component of it all. Part of him had known even then that Melanie was not only making the right decision, but that he'd only had himself to blame.

That, and the moment right before he aimed the car at her living room windows. He'd taken off his seat belt in a what-the-hell mood. He'd only had the car three weeks, and he wasn't the kind of person then who read manuals. It had never crossed his mind that Dad had found an old car just new enough to have an airbag. Which was just like Dad; he always worried.

No one had noticed the seat belt, and he'd never said. First because it seemed insufficiently cool and tough. Later, with a clearer head, because he realized he'd already given Dad enough pain. He couldn't do anything by then to make things better. He could hold back that one detail to make things less bad.

Now Wendy, who'd been somewhere in grade school at the time, was in the damage zone of that never-ending wrongdoing. He should have told her as soon as ... _before_ they were intimate. He should have insisted she read his dossier the other day, at least. He hadn't been strong enough. Her unthinking trust -- her love, though she was sparing with the word -- was just too tempting. She'd treated him as a completely good man, made him feel like he _was_. Now the bill was coming due.

An alarm -- the full-priority emergency signal -- cut through his reverie. He shut off the shower and grabbed his uniform.

---

"FATBOY's sent out another mind-control signal," Ida said when he reached the control room. I can't read the content, but I've got grid coordinates. And now that I know what to look for, I also picked up the confirmation signal back from somebody's U-Master. It's on."

"Can you block their signals?" the Middleman asked.

"Not a chance; they've got at least four repeaters apart from FATBOY headquarters. I think they had a pretty good idea what we can do before they decided to throw down on your personal planet."

Wendy was there too, still in uniform, checking out her sidearm. "I need your help," the Middleman said tentatively.

She met his eyes, frankly if not happily. "I'm rattled," she said. "But you know what I am sure of? I fucking _hate_ Manservant Neville. He does not get away with this mind control ... stuff ... just because he knows how to push our buttons. We'll find him, we'll stop him. And if it's okay with you, I'd kind of like to kill him."

"You have a deal," the Middleman said.


	7. Chapter 7

Part Seven

Summary: violations of personal space.

Author's Note: I'm pretty sure Manservant Neville was bullied at school. I don't know how you say "jocks versus geeks" in British, but he's got that air about him.

---

They'd barely passed out of Ida's line of sight, from the control room to the underground garage, when Wendy laid a hand on his arm. "Wait." When he waited, she put both arms around his neck and pulled him down into a kiss.

He couldn't help responding. But her touch was distilled agony all the same. Wendy might have fooled anyone else. Her muscles weren't rigid with fear or distaste, only _poised_. But he'd trained in the same fighting style, and he knew that quality of stillness.

Wendy had always had great courage, always would. But she'd never needed that courage to touch him before. The Middleman recoiled, not from her but from the image she was showing him. "Don't."

"I've made promises," Wendy persisted. "To you, and to myself. I should get the hell past this."

"Someone's dying out there." An excuse, but also the truth. That would be the final failure, if an innocent life was lost because he couldn't keep his corrupted past out of the Middleman's present.

He concentrated on driving, followed Ida's coordinates without wasting a second or a car-length of road room. But too much of his mind was left over to worry, and grieve. There was no law that a Middleman and apprentice had to bond deeply, or even like each other. Some of his predecessors had been pretty cold customers outside their profession. He'd let Wendy become his entire world. Probably couldn't have helped it, even without the romance. She was the only person he could be remotely honest with. He'd managed before, even achieved an austere peace of mind. Ten years on a thin diet of duty and job satisfaction, before she started setting off fireworks in his orderly world. But to have her, and lose her again...

Wendy had a point about hating Manservant Neville. The Middleman wouldn't kill him without cause, he hoped. But it would be gratifying if there was no other choice.

---

Tyler woke up in a strange bed. Comfortable, but strange. The room was dark, but judging by the light at the edges of the heavy curtains it was still daylight. He felt ... not hurt but drained, as if he was about to get the flu. Body and mind both. He could probably get up, or think, if he tried but there wasn't any reason right now.

He was lying on top of the covers, shoes off but otherwise dressed for work. The Bluetooth headset he used for his phone and U-Master alike was in his ear; he was wearing his new wristwatch. He'd probably creased his suit badly, lying down. He sat up and felt dizzy.

He'd gotten up this morning, he knew that. Had gone to Wendy and Lacey's apartment, trying to convince Lacey that Wendy was in danger. Wendy had been there too. They'd argued. He had an impression she'd hit him at one point. Maybe that was why he felt light-headed.

A token knock or two, and the door opened. It was Neville. "Hello, Tyler. I hope you're feeling better."

He rubbed his eyes. "Did I faint or something?"

"Or something. You've been under a lot of stress lately; I blame myself. You're in my penthouse. I suggest you stay the night; you still seem a bit shaky." He held up a hand, palm out, when Tyler moved. "Stay there. Rest as much as you like; the paperwork isn't going anywhere."

"Okay, Chief." Tyler stayed on the edge of the bed. "I guess I'm getting sick. The whole day is kind of fuzzy."

"I've been familiarizing you with the next software upgrade," Neville said. "I don't know that you got much out of the program code itself, but I'll have one of the developers talk you through it. I expect great things from the new programs, you know. We've seen a man turn back from mass murder at the last second while he was wearing a U-Master. Maybe we can create that effect on purpose, at least to some degree. The U-Master lets us put our moods under conscious control in an entirely new way. Imagine if that power was turned to reducing the violence in the world. Even the slightest effect would help."

"Maybe so. It would be a lot cheaper for people than Prozac." Tyler felt a little better now; he tried standing. His own U-Master was sitting on the bedside table. It didn't seem to be on, but he picked it up anyway. "But people who'd want that are probably mellow anyway. They aren't the ones who need cooling down."

"As you say." Neville had a faint, tolerant smile. "If only more people _did_ have such good judgment. If you feel like getting up, I won't stop you. There's a bathroom through that door, food and drink in the kitchen. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a test or two to run." He disappeared.

Tyler felt steadier on his feet now. He'd lost that tension headache he'd had so often lately. The bathroom was as sleek and immaculate as he would have expected. He splashed cold water on his face. Going by beard stubble, he couldn't have been asleep more than a couple of hours.

His eyes looked wrong, in the mirror. A light, arresting blue. Weren't they supposed to be dark brown? Was he suddenly an inch or three too tall?

Coffee. Coffee would help. Tyler picked up his U-Master and left the bathroom.

----

"There haven't been any 911 calls or police dispatches at this address," the Middleman said when he and Wendy pulled up in front of a multi-story apartment building a few blocks from downtown. "The mind-control signal has been transmitted constantly since Ida picked it up; maybe it takes considerable time to have an effect. I hope so." He was all business, hurt feelings packed away. Wendy knew he was doing it for her sake as much as his own, but the whole situation made her want to scream.

She stepped out of the Middlemobile, looked up. "Crap."

Eight stories of apartments. And a roof, which by its slope wasn't a place people normally went. A man was climbing around up there now; he spotted their car and waved cheerfully. A few other people at ground level were starting to notice him.

"Talk to him," the Middleman said. "Anything you can think of. I'll try to get to the roof." He went into the apartment foyer at a near-run.

They had slightly alien binoculars in the glove compartment. Wendy focused them on the apartment roof. The guy was wearing a U-Master, all right. Casual clothes, jeans and t-shirt. Youngish, shaggy-haired, slightly Asian. Once he would have been just her type.

She thumbed a switch on the side. It projected her voice to the point where the glasses were focused, more efficient and less blaring than a bullhorn. "Hey. Mister! Listen, I'm with ... the police Crisis Prevention Division, can we talk about this? My name's Wendy. Uh, what's yours?"

He waved again. "Hi!" Equally efficient audio pickups brought his voice back to Wendy. "It's gorgeous, I can see for miles up here!"

"Yeah, I bet." He didn't sound suicidal to Wendy. She tried to sound calm. "Listen, could you move back further from the edge? I'm scared you're going to fall."

"No problem." He moved closer to the edge.

"Listen, are you ... unhappy?" This was a problem in tact Wendy hadn't expected. "Because I have to say, you really look like you're about to jump off the building and kill yourself."

"No way. That would be crazy." Wendy relaxed a bit, before "I can fly, you know. Just haven't decided where to go yet."

"You don't want to do that," she said quickly. It was just possible, in her mad new comic-book life, that he _could_ fly. She doubted it. "I think that may be against the law. Would you like to, um, turn off that U-Master? Just so we can talk better."

"Sorry, but I'm kind of busy."

Wendy caught a glimpse of olive-drab moving closer along the roof. She talked louder. "Let me just ask, then -- how did you get able to fly? Because I, uh, also do articles for an alternative weekly newspaper. Freelance. I think you'd make a great cover story. I, I could really use the money if I sell an article."

"Okay. My name's Dave, by the way. I'll be right down."

"No!"

The Middleman broke out of cover and charged forward, on a line parallel to the edge of the roof. He was fast, but he was yards away. Dave only had to take two running steps.

It was a perfect swan dive, most of the way.

The Middleman pulled back out of an off-balance, last-second grab that came a couple of feet short. He'd probably have fallen too if he'd made the catch, Wendy thought with a stab of panic. But he steadied on the edge, looked down at her. "He wasn't suicidal. He wasn't even scared," she said miserably. "He thought he could fly."

One thing about the Middleman's anti-swearing policy. He didn't try to find words when none were adequate. A short, stiff nod. _We failed. We go on._ "We need to leave before the police arrive, or we'll be detained as witnesses for hours. We can't do any good here." He moved back toward the stairs.

Wendy holed up in their car and waited. When he reappeared on the ground floor, walking toward her, she assessed him as if they were strangers. An edge of danger wouldn't have done his physical appeal any harm back then. There were always giggly idiots lining up for the bad boys. Wendy had made plenty of mistakes in her life, but not that one. Even her worst relationships had at least _started_ with the belief that she could trust the flavor-of-the-month guy without reservation.

The Middleman's body hadn't been a surprise as such, when they started spending nights together. Between Silkwood showers and wet suits and alternate-universe guys who didn't believe in shirts, she'd had a good idea. The morning-after surprise had been his hair. When the styling gel wore off it not only lost its millimeter-precise part, it stood up in all directions. Out of love, respect, and friendship, Wendy had tried not to make jokes about electrocuted cats or bottle brushes. Not more than once a day, anyway.

Wendy rubbed her face. What a stupid thing to cry about.

He hadn't quite reached the car when her Middle-watch beeped the emergency signal. Wendy tilted the watch face away from herself. "What."

"FATBOY's sending out another brain whammy. It just started. Oh, and the one aimed at your location shut off."

He'd heard, too; the Middleman slid behind the wheel and spoke to his own watch. "Where is it?"

Ida read off coordinates. "About ten miles north of you. Remember I said that the U-Masters send data back to the home base? There was a return signal when your guy died. The gizmo must have notified them. Then there was about a five-minute gap before they targeted the next one."

Wendy and her boss made eye contact. _Five million U-Masters sold_ passed between them as clearly as telepathy. "Oh, God."

His expression was grim. "We're on our way, Ida."

----

Tyler Ford had gotten his coffee, but it hadn't helped much. He wound up in Neville's penthouse living room, still dazed. One end of the room held a conversation group of a couch and two comfortable chairs. The rest was more Billionaire Computer Magnate display space than a place to kick off your shoes and be comfortable. A fifteen-foot tall fireplace, a big video screen. A mahogany desk with a throne-like leather chair behind it, an up-to-the-second computer on the desk with a flat monitor nearly as large. A little office clutter showing it was a working desk, including some small pliers and chip pullers. Neville wasn't above, or past, upgrading his own RAM when he felt like it.

Tyler sank into one of the high-backed chairs. As he tried to pull himself together, a dream or a memory floated to the surface.

_He'd been in the guest suite. A shadow in the dim room, and Manservant Neville was sitting on the side of the bed. "I need it all, Tyler," he said. "Everything you know about your Wendy, about the Middleman -- that's her Neanderthal friend -- about how they operate. That's the very best help you can give me."_

_Neville's tone was clinical, not the friendly-mentor warmth Tyler was used to. Maybe he didn't need to seem friendly any more; that thought hurt. "That's why you hired me," Tyler said. "Because I was close to her. Not for me, for anything I do."_

_"Oh, you're useful," Neville assured him. "I expect you to become more so. But as an indirect hold on the Middleman, you're irreplaceable. Now. Can he be ruthless? Does he have the detachment to sacrifice some pawns on the way to winning the overall game?"_

_"How would I ... I've barely met him." But Tyler wanted to help. He tried to line up a coherent thought. "It's not just Wendy who fell for that guy; Lacey is into him too. And you know her, she's all 'French cuisine kills bunnies.' I don't see how she could like anyone like that."_

_"Very good, Tyler. That context is useful." Neville patted his shoulder. "Anything else you know. Can he bluff, play a double game?" _

_"Wendy was always complaining he had no sense of irony. Or humor, or anything. Really ticked her off."_

_That's very helpful," Neville soothed. "Go back to sleep now, Tyler. You don't have to remember this conversation."_

And he'd obeyed. Tyler wasn't sure if the memory was real or a dream; it had a flavor of unreality. If it were a dream, it didn't feel like his own.

Neville was doing something to him. Tyler Ford felt unclean at the thought; as if his body instead of his mind had been interfered with. He wanted to throw up.

He could run, or he could try. He could run to Wendy for protection; Neville clearly saw her and _that guy_ as a threat. But there were things in his mind that he didn't understand, couldn't control. He might be bringing her more danger.

He touched the U-Master headset on one ear. Tyler's head felt clear right now, but as long as he wore it that freedom could be taken from him at any time. And if he stopped wearing it, Neville would know he was resisting control.

----

The second location was townhouses, a large monetary step up from Dave's apartment complex. Ida's coordinates left them in a featureless driveway, row on row of three-story condos with closed garage doors at ground level. They stood outside the Middle-mobile and tried to get their bearings. "I hear a car running," Wendy said.

They followed the sound to one of the closed garage doors. The Middleman's expression changed to horror. "Carbon monoxide."

The door had no visible lock or latch, but it wouldn't open. A hard kick from the Middleman didn't dislodge anything. _We could hit it with the car_, Wendy thought, and mentally slapped herself.

He drew his pulse pistol and fired two shots at the top edge of the door, where a garage door opener motor would be. The metal tore and slagged. The door opened after that. A classic car -- something huge and boat-like from the Sixties, Wendy thought -- was inside, its engine chugging industriously. Someone was slumped behind the wheel.

The Middleman hauled her out into the open air. A slightly dumpy woman in her fifties, in a designer skirt suit. She looked like a doctor or a lawyer or a lawyer's wife. Her face was cherry red. The Middleman held her up in a sitting position and slapped her on the back. She choked. A long intake of clear air made her cough and gag, but she was alive. Her color changed back toward normal. "Ida, get an ambulance here right now. Tell them you're a neighbor, you saw her go into her garage."

Wendy turned off the car. There was a U-Master on the front passenger seat; she handled it like a bomb. "I think I know how to shut one of these off." She pushed a combination of buttons on the front. When she took the wireless headphones off the coughing, breathless woman it didn't make things worse. "Ida, did this thing get off a signal?"

"It did," the robot responded. "Different from the other one; I guess that's the 'nobody died' signal. Give me a second, I'm still monitoring the frequencies."

"Can you tell us what happened, ma'am?" the Middleman said. "Have you had any blackouts, missing time, dissociative episodes?" The woman waved a hand in acknowledgement, but was still too breathless to speak. He touched the side of her neck. "Your pulse is going back to normal. You should feel better in a few minutes."

"FATBOY's sending out another signal," Ida reported via their watches. "Fifteen miles southwest of you. Five miles east. Eight miles northeast."

"Make up your mind," Wendy said.

"It's three different signals. No, four. Five ..."

The Middleman propped their rescuee against the wall of her garage. He looked worse than she did.

Part of Wendy's mind was trying to map a path all over the city, even though the timing was impossible. The Middleman was going to have to pick one victim to save and let the others go. Past or no past, she knew what that would cost him.

Her cell phone rang. Wendy answered it by pure habit. "Hello?" More color drained from her face. "Boss, it's for you. It's him."

No room for misunderstanding. He took the phone from her, turned the volume to maximum. "Mr. Neville."

"I _thought_ I might find you standing next to Miss Watson." Wendy had good ears; the voice on the other end of the line was distant but easy to understand. "Apparently you've saved one; my congratulations. That was quick work."

"You've already killed a man today for no reason. Leave the others alone."

"Of course I had a reason. I wanted your attention. And I wanted to pose the question, how many places can you be at one time?"

"What do you want," the Middleman said flatly.

"I told you; I want you out of my business. I'm prepared to minimize casualties because it's in my own best interests," Neville said. "But if it comes down to the wire... I can stand to lose a few customers much more easily than you can stand letting them die. Can we take that as proven, or do we have to go through the whole tiresome process again?"

The Middleman stood frozen. In the last several months Wendy had seen him captured, wounded, immobilized, poisoned; every variation on close-to-death without dying itself. She'd never seen him beaten. "Do we?" Neville prompted.

His chin lowered. "No.

"Sensible fellow." The good cheer in Neville's voice was hideous. "Very well then, the problem goes away. Presto, nobody wants to kill themselves."

Ida, on their Middle-watches, was monitoring the conversation too. "He's telling the truth, boss," she said quietly. "All the suicide signals went away."

"I knew you could be reasonable," Neville said. The call cut off.


	8. Chapter 8

Summary: Free markets. Free will. You are what you choose.

----

They arrived back at Middle-HQ with the sound of slamming doors. Wendy was the first one into the control room, bristling like an enraged cat. "Ida, maybe you can get him to listen," she aimed at the android. "We can't give up. We've got to find an angle where we can hit this Neville guy back."

The Middleman was right behind her, moving with the same stiff over-controlled anger. "I'm listening. But with all due respect to the process of brainstorming, none of the suggestions you proposed in the car have tactical viability."

"You can't count the ones where you didn't let me _finish the damn sentence_."

"Those were so self-evident..."

Ida rolled her eyes. "Trouble in paradise. I don't know whether to celebrate or hit my self-destruct. Looks like this is going to be even louder than the other thing."

They were at one, for a second, with coldly furious looks at Ida. The next instant they turned them on each other. The Middleman dropped into his lecturing tone. "As it stands, Fatboy can balance five thousand hostages against the fate of the world. That horn of the dilemma that has to be addressed first or no counter-maneuver is possible."

"Already had Apprentice 101, thanks," Wendy retorted. "And that's where you go wrong. We've only got _his_ word for five thousand hostages. Neville is smart -- not comic-book smart, real-life smart. If he comes in here doing the Evil Overlord speech, it's because he wants to distract us from something else."

"You can't know that."

"Manservant Neville isn't off in a secret lair with mutant sharks and henchmen in orange jumpsuits," Wendy said. "When you get down to it, he's in _retail_. What would happen to Fatboy if five thousand of their customers suddenly dropped dead?"

"Stock value would go up?" suggested Ida.

"Five thousand people would be dead," The Middleman said doggedly.

"That's how you see it, and that's how I see it." Wendy's voice gentled a little. "Because we're human beings. Peter Lorre's understudy back there is _slime_. I'm not saying he cares a damn about people. I'm saying five thousand dead people would be bad _for him_. So bad that it's a bluff. The five-thousand-dead plan isn't something he wants to carry out. It's a mind game to keep you still until he figures out the control-without-killing plan that might actually stand a chance."

The Middleman shifted to a less angry posture. "Go on."

Wendy spoke with more confidence, seeing that. "If you ask me, he's _barely_ gotten away with three or four people dying with their U-Masters on. Some reporter or blogger is bound to notice the common thread any minute." She pointed at him. "You've told me since day one that normal people would panic if they knew about comic-book evil. How much would they panic if five thousand people died wearing U-Masters? Humans en masse may be dumb, but _squirrels_ could figure that one out. Even if it was a lot less; twenty people, or fifty. Inside of ten seconds everybody hooked to the internet, or watching CNN -- hell, anyone in sound of a radio station would rip off their U-Masters."

He nodded thoughtfully; Wendy kept going. "And people putting them on voluntarily is the _only_ power he's got. Not just super-villain power, regular power. Power, prestige, money... never mind worrying about his stock prices. He'd go from Bono Saint Steve Jobs to the most hated man alive in a heartbeat. The first thousand people in rampaging-mob distance of his headquarters would rip him apart."

His eyes were distant. Most people, beyond a certain point, would see strangers' deaths as only numbers. She knew the Middleman could feel each one as a separate human being. "You could be right," he said slowly. "But that many deaths ..."

"I don't think he can _get_ as far as that many deaths." Wendy hoped her guess was right. "Neville is trying to have it both ways, Comic Book Evil and a multimillion-dollar corporation. And you know what, Boss? Those two things don't go."

"The kid may be on to something," Ida said in wonder. "Sure, maybe we'd lose a few meat-bags along the way. But it's not like this planet is running short."

He shook his head. "No plan that sacrifices innocent lives is acceptable. Not thousands, not one. You know that, Dubbie. They're in our care."

She risked touching his hand. "I don't want people to die either. I don't think they have to die. Damn sure, not five thousand of them. I'm saying, Neville _wants_ us to be paralyzed by the hard choice. He laid it out as comic book evil because if you fight by comic book rules, he wins. So don't. Find rules _we_ can win by."

The change in his expression wasn't even a ghost of a smile, but some of the tension eased. "I said you think like a Middleman, didn't I. What do you have in mind?"

"Let's get that whole 'normal people can't handle the truth' thing working _for_ us for once. We don't lay a finger on Neville or on Fatboy. We hit them in the reputation. He's in the computer nets all over the world; well, so are we, with HEYDAR. We use that. Rumors all over the Internet. E-mails and fake press releases and phone calls -- can we fake phone calls, Ida? -- that all the TV networks think are coming from reliable sources. He's expecting us to come punch him in the face like Adam West or somebody; he won't expect that."

The Middleman shook his head; Wendy detected a bit of regret. "It's clever. But we can't betray the existence of the Middle organization, not even in circumstances this grave."

"It doesn't have to come from us," Wendy said. "Make it look like a disgruntled Fatboy employee, something like that. But in the meantime everybody on Earth will be scared as shit of their own U-Masters. Maybe they don't believe crazy rumors all the way, but they take the thing off just to be on the safe side. Once that's done, Neville is finished."

The regret faded. "He might be finished. Or he might go ahead and use the murderous version of the software, do as much damage as he could to the people still wearing U-Masters. Take his power away -- on the corporate side, where he feels the most secure -- and he might decide to do as much harm as he can on his way down. It's too risky."

"He'd be stupid to try it," Wendy said.

"It's not about intelligence. It's about how much he'll want revenge, if his world starts collapsing. If he's in control of his computers when that happens, he could take even more lives than the five thousand he threatened."

Wendy looked down. "I really thought I had something." Something that would wipe away the shadows under his eyes, straighten his shoulders again. Show that she shared his commitment to the job on the deepest level, so they could move closer together again. "Maybe there's a way, some kind of modified plan -- we can't just sit here." Another idea struck her. "Boss, if we let him work the bugs out of his mind control, the _first_ command he'll send is that everybody loves their U-Master forever. We won't have any chance of getting them away from people, then."

His weight shifted. The Middleman didn't look good, Wendy thought frantically, but he found the energy to pat her arm gently. His voice, too, was more like himself than he'd been in hours. "Your tactical instincts are sound, Dubbie. Didn't I say you'd be exceptional at our job?"

"Ah, thanks."

"Just as you said, the dilemma he set for us -- five thousand people dead or six and a half billion in mental thrall -- is the problem he's facing himself. He can't achieve both. And you're right to point out the difference in magnitude between those evils."

He was out of his frozen state, back on the job; that had to be a good thing. Wendy tried to work out why his renewed animation scared hell out of her. "I only meant, don't get locked into Neville's plan. I don't mean let anybody die."

"That would be intolerable," he promised. "You're too good a Middleman to mean that, and I'm proud of you." He offered a hug, not sexual but fond. Wendy locked onto him, tears stinging her eyes.

"My God, I hate human hormones." Ida rolled her eyes and left the room. Neither of them looked up.

Wendy leaned her face against the shoulder of his jacket. "I shouldn't have freaked out on you. You were a dumb kid back then."

A ghost of his stillness came back. "I was old enough to be responsible for what I did."

"I don't mean that. I mean that I was a dumb kid _today_. Not a good partner, either kind. I know who you are now, you're the Middleman. You're going to come up with a plan, and I'm going to be right in there with you."

He buried his fingers in her hair, leaned a cheek against the top of her head. "Wendy." Then in a more businesslike tone, "I have some ideas; nothing that's ready to discuss yet. What I am sure of is that we _can_ solve this, thanks to you. If Neville's figured out my thinking, he hasn't the least clue about yours. He's going to regret that."

Wendy squeezed him tighter. "Boss, you scared me. Going away like that."

"I know. I'm sorry. I love you, Wendy Watson. Every bit of you. If you think that feeling is worth returning, I'm going to stop arguing with my good fortune."

She laughed; it hurt a little, but she didn't care. "About damn time."

Wendy leaned back a bit for a better look. His tawny eyes were shining with that guileless integrity again. "We have some time," he said a little shyly. "I'd like to hold you for a while."

Wendy grinned. "I'd like to let you."

------

An oddly exact use of words, even from him. Wendy found herself still in her clothes, later , in the bachelor room and single bed he'd used before they were lovers. The Middleman lay spooned against her back, in most of his own uniform.

The limited contact that frustrated Wendy had clearly been exactly what he needed. The warm, breathing wall of him was relaxed beyond any possible pretense. He slept like a man with all his burdens laid down. Wendy pressed back against him, soaking in body heat, and told herself that sexual tension was nothing to worry about. Her nerves jangled all the same. She wanted to cling to him for protection; she wasn't sure whose.

Not just her nerves. A vague, intermittent rattling from the floor. Wendy looked over the edge of the bed, saw her personal cell vibrating to itself in the pile of discarded boots and gunbelts. She slipped out of bed and took it to the hall.

Her cell didn't recognize the number any more, since she'd taken it out of autodial, but Wendy did. She closed the bedroom door all the way. "Tyler," she said coolly.

"Listen, I'm in serious trouble." Her former boyfriend did sound shaken, worse than she'd ever heard him. "And yeah, you were right, I was wrong. Stomp all over me if you want. Wendy, what's a Middleman?"

Her lips parted in a snarl. "Who wants to know? You, or Manservant Neville? Is there even a difference any more?"

"Wendy, I'm scared. I need your help."

She gave him a little mercy, grudging it. "A Middleman is someone who fights evil so you don't have to. Sort of an adult guardian responsible for this crazy planet. And you could have been one instead of me, Tyler, if you'd turned up for that job interview. All that ability -- I always said you were smart -- and what are you now?"

A barked laugh that sounded inches from hysteria. "I don't know what I am. Stuff is coming out of me that I don't understand. Wendy, I was spying on your sublet."

"I know."

"I bought an entire building, with Neville's money, so I could spy on your sublet. How crazy is that? You know, I hope you know, I'm not that kind of person."

"I wouldn't have thought so."

"He must know. Neville. I'm not authorized to spend anything like that amount. But he hasn't mentioned it. Wendy, his memories are _in my head_. He can put stuff in my head. I think you're right, I think it was the U-Master."

Tyler didn't sound like an enemy, or not a willing one. Wendy gave a little. "You're right, it is. The guy at the school -- I don't know if the U-Master set him up to kill other people, but it set him up to kill himself. A guy named Dave threw himself off a building right in front of me, happy as a clam, because he thought he could fly. A woman tried to gas herself with her own car, we barely stopped her."

"He hired me to get at you, Wendy," Tyler said. A tone of genuine hurt. "And through you, at that guy."

"I know. It's not fair, but it's true." Wendy wasn't listening to her own tone of voice. She would have recognized the crisp, military-style briefing. "Tyler, he hasn't even _started_ yet. He's just testing the mind control features. Working out how to jerk people around without killing them on the first command. Every new U-Master can do it. Millions. He said he wants to conquer the world without anybody noticing. The Middleman's the only one who can stop him, but if he even tries to more people will die. He's working on a plan...."

A dozen clues came together in her mind, not suspicion but certainty. "...that's sheer elegance in its simplicity." Wendy swallowed. Made herself breathe evenly, as if she'd just been wounded.

Tyler, unable to see her, missed the nuances. "Hello?"

"One dead civilian or five thousand, it's the same in his head. He's trying to convince himself it's the minimum harm, six billion lives against five thousand. Even if it is, he won't live if he has to do that. Not five minutes."

He took in her tone, if not all her words. "You really do love that guy."

Wendy's voice gentled for a few seconds. "I always will. If that's enough to make you hate him, then keep on doing what you're doing. You couldn't possibly hurt us worse." She squared her shoulders." When he goes in to fight Neville, I'll be with him. If he doesn't finish the mission, maybe I can. I don't know if we can save all the U-Master users. I don't expect we can save ourselves. But we can save the world from Neville, and we will." Her tone went flat. "Don't be in the way, Tyler. We'll be in a hurry."

Tyler was silent for several seconds. Then, "I can get you into the building. He lives here, you know. There's a penthouse on top of the main offices. His office up here controls the whole mainframe. Would that help?"

"Neville will kill you if he finds out."

"I probably deserve it. Wendy, I love you. I can't let anything happen to you."

Wendy didn't like herself much, using that affection. But she didn't have to like herself to do her job. "Then help us stop Neville. This is war, until he's dead or we are. Whose side are you on?"

"I'm on your side. Always. Private elevator on the east side of the building. No other apartments, just offices; the whole place is pretty deserted after nine or so."

"Nine," Wendy agreed. "We'll be there. Just get us inside."

----

Tyler hadn't quite dared leave Neville's penthouse to make his phone call. The elevator had a security camera, and he hoped that avoiding overt opposition to Neville would make him a little safer. But he'd gone to the back corner of the penthouse kitchen, spoken in a near-whisper. He walked out of the kitchen to the main living room, moving as quietly as he could.

"What a passionate young woman," Neville said out of the shadows. "No wonder you dote on her so."

Tyler jumped. Neville showed him empty hands, palms out. "Relax. I'm not in your mind now, not at all. I want to talk to you man to man about all this."

"Instead of man to mind control robot zombie?" Tyler knew he was talking like a comic book hero; it was the only vocabulary he had for this kind of situation. And even imitation bravado gave him a little confidence. "I think we've kind of gone past 'join me, it is your destiny.'"

"I understand your resentment. I presumed on your good will." Neville sounded genuinely sorry. "But you signed up to change the world. Well, I'm changing it for the better. Let me perfect my control system and we can have a golden age, without war or conflict."

"Because everyone will do what you tell them," Tyler shot back.

Neville shrugged. "Is that so terrible? _Everyone_ does what they're told, one way or another. Their government, their favorite celebrity, their upbringing, their religion. Their personal appetites. Free will is an illusion, even though human beings can't help believing in it. I don't intend to be heavy-handed. I'm only going to abolish some of the more obvious stupidities."

"And you get to decide what's stupid, for the entire world."

Neville smiled. "I'll do it well, too. If I put guidelines in a book and told people it was God's idea, they'd be singing my praises. Maybe even starting a holy war -- these things do so often get out of hand -- to kill anyone who was against universal peace. Isn't it more sensible, more _orderly_, to do things a more modern way?"

He wasn't joking. That more than the scheme itself made Tyler step back. "You put your memories in my head. You didn't ask, you just did it."

Neville's smile widened. He clearly felt the persuasion was going very well. "I did, yes. That knowledge, that experience, cost me two-thirds of my life to amass. I'm handing it to you as a free gift. Imagine what you can do, building on that foundation. Who else could I trust at my right hand? You're the one who's going to get the full benefit of my process, not me; no doubt you'll outlive me by decades. And that's only a start. Think about Miss Watson herself. The young lady _nearly_ still loves you. Just a nudge, a light adjustment, and you can have her back forever."

"Touch her and I'll kill you," Tyler shot out.

Neville looked benign, understanding. "Tyler, I'm going far out of my way to make this easy on you. I want your willing cooperation, truly I do. But if you insist, we can go back to the hard way." A U-Master, Tyler's, was at his elbow. He reached for the controls.

Tyler grabbed his earpiece as if it hurt him. "Stop messing with my head." Under the fear, his mind had a coolness he hadn't known was part of him. _Keep backing up. The desk. Use some of that stuff as weapons._

Neville laughed out loud. "Oh, _now_ you're shamming. But it's a worthy effort, for a beginner." He held up a tool, the delicate pliers Tyler had found earlier. "Cutting the wires in your headset showed real creativity. But electronics aren't your specialty. Didn't you realize the hardware has internal diagnostics? I knew the moment your U-Master stopped working."

Tyler threw the thing off entirely; Neville didn't seem upset. "You're an integral member of my team," he said cheerfully. "Far too valuable to risk losing. So the basic circuits are backed up in your new watch. Short range, rudimentary, but good enough."

Tyler fumbled at the watch band. His hands wouldn't cooperate. Neville stepped toward him, held out a new headset. "Let's not make this difficult." Tyler's legs were more willing to obey him. He scrambled, if clumsily, toward the fire stairs. Neville blocked his path. "_Do it."_

The headache was like a bomb going off. Tyler wondered if he was about to die of a stroke anyway. That brief division of concentration was his downfall. He felt his own fingers taking the thing, seating it in his left ear. He fought hard. The tiny part of himself that was still free found a chink in its prison walls, controlled his voice a little longer. "Wendy will stop you. She promised."

Neville shrugged his shoulders. "She's welcome to try."

---

Wendy was reappraising her world as she stepped back into the bedroom. It felt like testing a cracked bone to see if she could walk on it. _All I've seen, all we've done, and still I can forget what you are. Pure soldier_. Because she'd comforted the Middleman on the personal side -- and it had been a comfort, no mistaking that -- she'd assumed that carried over to their professional crisis. But there was more than one kind of fearlessness. It could be ordinary confidence that they had a good chance of winning. Or absence of fear born from absence of hope -- all the decisions made, nothing left to do but watch them play out and then pay the price.

He was dressing, with meticulous attention to detail even for him. If Middlemen had white-glove inspections he'd have passed easily. The cold heavy lump was back in the pit of Wendy's stomach. She spoke flatly enough to pass for normal. "That was Tyler. He can get us inside Fatboy, tonight. It could be a trap, but I don't think we can afford to be picky." She stopped, waited until he returned her direct look. "We're running out of time, aren't we?"

The Middleman nodded. "Ida checked on the woman we saved from her car. She's shown no physical ill effects from being controlled. Neville must be very close to his solution. Before he might have waited three weeks for his official software release; your idea about turning his customers against him really was a good one. Now, with us closing in on him..."

"He'll hit the scary red 'World Conquest' button the second he thinks the odds are in his favor," Wendy said. "Good thing you have that super-secret plan to save the world, then. The one that -- let me just take a wild guess -- involves me staying here while you deal with Neville alone."

He was no good at lying, worse at hiding it; his stunned expression confirmed all Wendy's fears. "You don't have a secret plan," she said. "Just the one in plain sight you hope to God I don't see. Well, I've seen it. You're trying to save me again -- not from dying, from sharing the guilt. It's way too late for that."

With lying off the table, he was momentarily out of words. Wendy came in closer. "It's not a plan, it's a worst-case scenario. You'll try to destroy Fatboy's computers, erase the mind-control program so it can't ever kill anyone again. You'll try to get Neville to give you the code so you can shut it off. If he doesn't, you're going to hope like hell that he was bluffing. But if worst comes to worst, if it's five thousand dead or the whole world enslaved -- you'll still kill him."

"Does that sound like me?" the Middleman couldn't get the ring of truth into it, but he tried.

"You're very exact with words. Trading off that many lives ... you didn't say it was impossible, or unthinkable. You said _intolerable_. If you have to kill Neville, if they die along with him, I know who's number five thousand one. You can do what you can't tolerate -- as long as you don't have to live with it. You've given this job your life, your identity. You've always expected to give it your death. If you have to lay down your honor too.... you aren't the kind of man who keeps anything back."

He looked shamed, worse than this afternoon. Wendy clutched his ice-cold hands in hers. "You thought I'd fight you on it. But maybe I've finally grown the hell up enough to be a real Middleman. I'm _not_ saying no. I'm saying that if you have to walk into Hell -- again -- I'm going with you."

He watched her, taking it all in. Wendy had done all she could with words; she willed for the double handclasp to say the rest.

The pain lines showed in his face again. Wendy was dragging him back into the world where he had choices, and the strain showed. "No. It means more than I can say that you're willing to go, but no. It would be bad enough trying to prevent that level of atrocity, and failing. Letting it happen ... I want you free of that. One of us is enough."

"There's no such thing as _one of us._ I'm your partner. Fighting evil is as much my job as it is yours." She squeezed hard. "If you die without me, I'll believe for the rest of my life that I could have saved you. And together, we could have saved _them_. That makes me just as responsible as you, if something terrible happens. You can't protect me from this. Let me be there; maybe we can protect each other."

"Who'll be the Middleman if we're both gone?" he tried, his voice desperate. "The Middle organization needs you."

"Don't tell me there isn't a contingency plan for losing both at once. Not the way Middlemen go jumping on grenades." Wendy shook her head sharply. "I told you once, you're mine. You had to give up your whole life once before, because it was the only halfway right choice. If it comes to that again -- and your honor, and your death -- then you aren't going alone."

He raised her hands to his lips. Wendy could see them all now: the soldier, the hero, the lover, even the ghost of the needy teenager. All loving her without limits, nothing held back. She couldn't find words, not even _no regrets_.

Wendy Watson leaned forward until her head rested on the Middleman's shoulder, turned a little to listen to his heartbeat. His arms went around her.

---

To be concluded.


	9. Chapter 9

Tyler Part Nine - Conclusion

Summary: two Middlemen enter. Who, or what, will leave?

----

Wendy's father always said troops should go into action rested and with a hot meal. Her mother always said not to leave the house without a shower and clean underwear. They took both sets of advice. When Wendy got out of her -- solitary -- shower she went to the back of the closet for her old uniform. The Girl Sidekick version with the jacket she'd never even been able to button right around her hips. _What does this say about me, except that you're my boss?_ she'd argued once, angling for a makeover. Tonight she had no intention of saying anything else.

Making every uniform detail perfect was a comfort, in a funny sort of way. It was like his recurring phrase, _the man I choose to be_. She was going to be the best (trainee) Middleman she could, even if it killed her tonight. Especially then.

He barely said a word in the car, on the way to FATBOY. But he drove with his left hand only, an obvious safety violation, so the other hand never had to leave her shoulder. When Wendy said anything, once or twice, he focused on her so intently that she had real worries about getting there in one piece.

It was easy to find Manservant Neville's private section of the FATBOY building. It had its own two-level parking garage, separate from the larger employee parking. A security guard in a kiosk, U-Master headphones covering both his ears, waved them through the gate. Inside were two dozen or so parking spaces filled with classic cars, a modest limousine -- and one empty parking space at the back, right by the elevator.

"I'm changing my vote," Wendy said. "It's not fifty-fifty chance of a trap. It's about two hundred percent."

He parked the Middlemobile. "I know."

"Say the word and we can go in shooting anything that moves. Well, hopefully not Tyler."

"I'd like to save Tyler Ford if we can. He's as much an innocent victim as anyone." The Middleman shook his head. "No frontal assault. If there's the slightest chance of ending this without killing the ... distributed network of hostages, that would ruin it. We keep him talking, we look for a tactical opportunity. And if you see it before I do, Dubbie, _act_. Don't clear it with me, don't count the consequences. One full-fledged Middleman may not be enough for this mission."

Wendy was able to smile a little. "Do I get little plastic wings, like a kid on her first airplane ride?"

"You get to be Wendy Watson. I can't think of a higher honor." A ghost of his smile in return. He leaned close to kiss her. Stopped himself, glanced at the security camera only a few yards away above the elevator. It was pointing directly at them.

"Screw him." Wendy grabbed the back of his head, Took a long, self-indulgent, short-of-breath moment before she let go. "What's the phrase, moving with purpose?"

"That one will do." The Middleman opened his car door. The elevator doors opened by themselves the second he and Wendy left the car.

---

The private elevator opened to a two-story, ornate living room with a desk at the far end. Manservant Neville stood in front of it, clearly at ease. "There you are," he said jovially. "Practically late; that's bad manners."

It had occurred to Wendy, on the elevator ride, that there were plenty of places to shoot a man which would leave him able to answer questions. Also really, really motivated to get painkillers. Her right hand moved; Neville's quick dark eyes followed it instantly. "Now, now." He stepped to one side. Tyler Ford was seated behind the desk holding a handgun, muzzle pressed under his own chin. His eyes were clear, agonizingly aware of his situation. "Don't be rash," Neville said mildly. "Guns on the floor, I think, first thing. If it needs spelling out, Tyler has instructions to take it _very_ badly if I'm hurt or threatened."

The Middleman laid his gun down calmly, and took a couple of steps further into the room. His eyes were cool, appraising. Measuring the precise distance to Neville's throat, Wendy thought.

She copied both movements. "Hang on, Tyler. We're going to help you."

The Middleman didn't say anything. Neville was beginning to look annoyed. "'You'll never get away with this?'" he suggested. "'Come out and fight like a man?' Or, let's be more original. 'I surrender.'"

"Give us access to your computers," the Middleman said. His eyes hadn't moved from Neville's face. "When the mind-control software is destroyed -- all the copies -- we'll take Mr. Ford and go. That still leaves you with a major corporation and enough money for ten lifetimes."

A short bark of laughter. "I'm sorry, but that's too amusing. Starting with the idea that _you_ could find hidden backup copies in my network. Counteroffer. I get the planet, you get your lives. You stay here -- behind locked doors, but quite comfortably -- until the software is implemented. A few days, no more. Afterward you can both leave. Tyler stays; he really has been very helpful."

"So much for your promise to leave people's minds alone," the Middleman said. "I told you you'd become a monster."

"Did you? I'd forgotten." Neville stabbed a U-Master button on the desk. Tyler went white with pain. Wendy started toward him; the Middleman stopped her with one hand on her arm. "This could get tedious," Neville went on. "Can we take it as read that any impertinence will cost innocent lives, and go from there?" He released the button. Tyler slumped in relief, but his gun hand didn't move.

"He's still in there," Wendy said. "Fight him, Tyler. You're not like this, you know you aren't."

"What he _is_ includes about forty percent of my conscious memories by now;" Neville said clinically. "When it reaches fifty-one percent, does that give me full voting control? It's an interesting question. I was hoping for a true copy of my own mind -- a kind of immortality -- but that doesn't appear to have happened. At least not yet."

"Keep talking, Shorty," Wendy snarled. "I called dibs on killing you five hours ago."

Neville's finger hovered over the button. "Where did you get the alien technology?" the Middleman said hastily.

"Oh, that." He shrugged. "I went shares with another collector of ... unusual artifacts, a salvage operation. Sadly, his portion of the material included an alien cyborg that wasn't quite dead. It's taken me nearly five years to adapt my share for human use."

"You know we can't allow that," the Middleman said flatly. "Whatever the consequences."

"And you know you aren't leaving this room alive." Neville smiled. "At least, I assume you know."

"Thanks, we stumbled onto that one," Wendy snapped.

Neville looked like he'd just been struck by an idea. "There may be some negotiating room after all. You do still have the ability to -- if not prevent, at the very least make it very inconvenient -- for me to get something I want." He was speaking directly to the Middleman. "And I have something, apart from the world, that I'm sure you'd gladly die for. I'm prepared to be generous."

"Your word's worthless," the Middleman said.

"If you're so good at your job, you'll be able to tell if I'm lying." Neville gestured casually. "I'll let her keep her mind. Out of my control, free to think, plan, observe. Who knows, she might foil my evil plans. It's a better chance than our Tyler has at the moment." He glanced back at the younger man, smiled indulgently. "And you can believe me because I don't _want_ to be surrounded by drones. At least, not completely. I imagine she has a fine line in defiant speeches; I'd enjoy hearing that. Bear in mind I'm taking a risk. If she ever got free she'd burn my company down around me."

"What do you want?" the Middleman said cautiously.

"About the only thing I can't get over your dead body." Neville opened a desk drawer, brought out a fresh U-Master and headset. "Your mind for hers. You decide."

The Middleman stood absolutely still, facing Neville. "No," Wendy said. He acted as if he hadn't heard her. "No, boss." She touched his arm, and he turned. "I won't let you. Even plan B is better than this one." What had already happened to Tyler was hideous. Seeing it happen to him too would be ...

... _intolerable_.

Behind Neville, Tyler's eyes were fixed on her. He couldn't move under his own control, not even his lips, but he looked as horrified as she felt. _He knows something_. "Then I'll do it," Wendy said. "I'll do it, and you can save me."

"That deal isn't on the table," Neville put in. "Don't waste my time."

Wendy saw her Middleman consider the options. High on the list was attacking Neville -- the lack of weapons would be no hindrance -- and breaking peripheral bones until he revealed his computer codes. But that might end with five thousand dead a day later. _Would_ end with Tyler's brains on the wall a half-second later. And that raised the stakes from intolerable to impossible, she realized. Strength or weakness, he couldn't see a human being die while he had the power to stop it.

"Don't worry, Wendy. It'll be all right." The Middleman took another step forward.

"That's far enough." Neville made a quick examination of the equipment, never quite taking his eyes off his opponents. "Excuse the delay. Tyler tried to sabotage his controller at one point. Impressive, when you think about it. But these work fine." Tossed the wireless headphones casually; the Middleman caught them. Wendy grabbed desperately at his arm.

----

Tyler didn't let himself hope; he knew too much about how Neville's mind worked. He tried hard to pull the trigger on himself. If he was out of the equation, maybe Wendy and her buddy could break the stalemate. _You said yourself he's a monster; can't you see? Can't you __**guess**__?_ His hand, his whole body was utterly out of his control. Next instant, that guy was wearing the headset. All Tyler could do was close his eyes.

----

Wendy's hands closed around the Middleman's forearm. He didn't respond. His face had gone as blank as a rubber mask. "Boss," she said, a little desperate. _Don't leave me alone._

"I put in a lot of failsafes, programming that particular U-Master," Neville remarked. "Working with Tyler has been very educational. He can hear you, young lady, but he can't react until I set him in motion." Neville's voice sounded light, but it carried an ugly edge. "So here we are. All those esoteric gadgets and near-superhuman powers, generations of secret mystique -- and it comes down to a muscular nitwit in a uniform."

"This is getting weird," Wendy snarked, trying to hide her rising panic. "I mean, obviously I get the part about you being a power-mad twit. But _that's_ just twisted. Is it the whole height thing, or did somebody beat you up in high school?"

Neville smiled tolerantly. "That's not the level of damsel-in-distress speech I was hoping for. Perhaps we should concentrate on the distress. I believe traditionally, every damsel needs a monster." He pressed several buttons. "There'd be a lot less trouble in the world if people accepted their basic nature and got on with it. You, for example -- once a thug, always a thug. Speeches about honor and duty can't change that."

"No," Wendy said numbly.

"But yes," Neville said. "Clarence -- do you mind if I call you Clarence? -- have a look at her." The Middleman's head turned, his eyes as blank as an animal's. "When you think about it, she's the symbol of everything you tried to turn yourself into. All that hard work to be brave and noble and selfless enough to deserve someone like her. But it's never enough, is it? It must be an enormous strain, holding in all those impulses. All that frustration, metastasized into rage... I think it's time to let it out."

"You're so off base it isn't funny," Wendy said. Stepping back a little. "Tell him, boss..."

"I can't blame you for believing him. He certainly believed himself," Neville said. "If it's any consolation, he's going to be very sorry afterward." He glanced back toward his desk. "I believe Tyler already _is_ sorry. I offered to let him keep you at one point. I shall have to see if I can't erase the nastier memories when I've got a minute; I don't want Tyler damaged. But you two are very annoying." His eyes went back to the Middleman. "Clarence, hurt her. Be creative."

Wendy backpedaled. He came after her, eyes unfocused, tracking on pure motion. "_Boss_." Wendy had fought his body once before, when he was possessed by a budding mad scientist named Eleanor, but Eleanor hadn't had a fraction of his skill. This ... being ... moved exactly like her Middleman in a murderous rage. His face was flushed brick red. "Good time to lose those headphones." Wendy darted in, hand out; he knocked her arm off line with a slap like a gunshot. She recoiled. Kept recoiling, as he moved forward like a juggernaut.

Wendy dodged, put a couch between them. "This isn't you, Boss. Not in a million years." Which was the best part of the sadistic payoff for Neville. Not that she'd die, but that later he could make the Middleman remember doing it. _That would kill him from the soul out._ Wendy could never win a full-on fight, on mass and raw strength alone, if he was at anything like normal ability. She wasn't sure she could bring herself to hurt him at all.

"You've got more willpower than anybody. Fight him." Wendy's left hand went to the back of her gun belt. She had a thermal grenade which would scrub this whole floor off the top of the FATBOY building. Maybe that was the best option they had left.

Her concentration split too long. When she took her eyes off him, he vaulted the couch and slung her bodily across the room. By trained reflex and luck, she landed soft against a chair.

_Luck_. Against a man who knew to a millimeter what she could and couldn't do in a fight.

If she'd guessed wrong, she was a dead woman. But Wendy's gut didn't believe it. A small pedestal table stood next to the chair. Wendy hurled it at the Middleman's head. He deflected it with both forearms in front of his face. Next he came straight in like a rampaging bull. Launched a sweeping closed-fist backhand that looked fit to shatter granite, except that his balance was off; all show, no stopping power. Wendy caught it on a forearm block of her own, staggered backward several feet with barely a bruise.

She risked eye contact. The Middleman's were still too bright, glazed with incipient psychosis, but one of them winked an instant while his back was to Neville. _Moscow rules eighteen b -- don't break out laughing when you're supposed to be getting beaten to death._ Wendy let her eyes widen with fear, moved lopsidedly as if favoring broken ribs. Manservant Neville looked delighted.

They couldn't pass off light-contact sparring as homicide for more than a few seconds. Wendy focused on his eyes. _What's the plan? You could pound him flat anytime_... They angled toward the desk. _Tyler. Got it._ Wendy dodged the wrong way. Big hands closed on her shirt collar and jacket front; she let out a terrified yelp. Mule-kicked him in the stomach. The Middleman got Wendy's neck in a wrestling hold, paused as if considering snapping it on the spot. Neville leaned forward a little, eyes glittering. When they had his full attention the Middleman launched her in the general direction of the desk, and Tyler.

The gun pressed under his chin was Wendy's only priority; all the other parts of her landing had to take care of themselves. She bowled him over and out of the chair, wrenching the gun sideways with one grip on the barrel and the other over Tyler's hand. It went off. Wendy had picked her vector expecting that it would. The bullet ploughed through a side wall, left a hole the size of a quarter dribbling plaster dust. _I sure hope there aren't any houseguests._ Tyler lay twitching feebly on the floor. She found his U-Master, ran through the shutdown sequence. "Stay down. We're still on the clock." Wendy patted his shoulder in reassurance. Kicked the gun into a corner, stood up.

The Middleman hadn't moved. He turned to Manservant Neville with an air of _excuse me, you were saying?_ mild social interest. Wendy supposed he was entitled to a little mean under the circumstances.

"How did you..." Neville grabbed desperately at the U-Master, stabbed buttons.

The Middleman flinched a little but let it go on. Then he closed the distance. A smooth motion later he had both Neville's wrists pinned in one hand, the other closed around the shorter man's throat. "Yes, I do mind. I'm just the Middleman."

Manservant Neville pulled away desperately, with no visible effect. "Hostages." He spit the word out, clearly not sure he'd get a second one. "They'll still die if you do me any harm. Nothing's changed..." The words died away in a sound with a bent-cartilage quality about it. Feverish spots of red showed on Neville's cheeks. He had -- just -- room to breathe; he was suffering from spinal-reflex terror rather than physical damage.

"Then you shouldn't have lowered the tone of the discussion." The Middleman's voice was almost emotionless. Cold and sane in a way that made blood-red rage seem mellow. His eyes moved. "Wendy? I could use a hand."

"Right there." Wendy lifted the headphones off his ears. He flinched when she moved them; an eerie, tooth-grinding whine was audible from the speakers. She threw the thing down. "Are you all right?"

"Adequate." His light tone wasn't a complete success but Wendy got the message; personal damage could wait. "I have handcuffs in my belt, second pocket on the right. Let's try that chair."

The handcuffs were the single-use plastic kind. They attached both Neville's wrists to the arms of a wooden chair, antique but solid-looking. "I guess it's all fun and games until somebody loses their mind control," Wendy commented. "Did you ever see _Road House_? That one guy who got his neck..."

"Don't sink to his level, Dubbie."

"I was going to try and make him pee himself." It came out less of a snark, more of a real impulse, than Wendy had intended. She was still coming to grips with how profoundly Neville had intended to destroy them. _Right back at you, pal. If there __**is**__ a way to hurt you that bad when you don't love anyone_. But having her Middleman back was worth everything, even if Neville got the benefit of his code of ethics. "I want to know too. How _did_ you break the gizmo?"

"I didn't. But the U-Master was an obvious attack, given Neville's psychology. Equally clearly, the control system worked primarily by sound. I had Ida deaden my eighth cranial nerve pair before we left."

"The wha?"

"I'm completely deaf for about another four hours. It cut out almost all the coercive effects."

_And you were lip-reading so he wouldn't catch on,_ Wendy mouthed. Switched to normal speech. "You could have told me."

"I couldn't be sure it would work." His eyes went distant. "I didn't want you to hesitate defending yourself, if it hadn't."

Wendy thought about the flinches when Neville tried to control him. About the difference between _almost_ no mental attack and none. "How do you feel?"

"It feels like getting your brain raped," Tyler said harshly. Both their heads turned. The younger man had dragged himself to his feet. "Like you're a _thing_ instead of a person, and there's nothing you can do but see it happen." He was braced upright with one hand on the desk. Tyler had the gun back, in the other. "Hey, Chief? I quit." He raised it.

The Middleman interposed himself, without drama. "I'm sorry. That isn't going to happen."

"For one thing, we need him alive," Wendy added. "He's got a code set up in his computer. If he doesn't give it a password every twenty-four hours, the new software will go out automatically and thousands of people will die."

Neville, still shaken, seized on the loophole. "That's right. Three hours in this case; I've been busy today."

"Lunch, defragging your hard drive, killing innocent people, stuff like that," Wendy put in.

"Is that all?" Tyler set the gun down, turned on the computer on the big desk. "Maybe I can help out with that." He worked through the first several screens with expert haste.

Wendy stared. "Since when are you a computer guy?"

"I hear I'm forty percent of one." Tyler kept on typing.

"I never gave you ... I never gave him that code," Neville said. "I'd be a fool to."

The Middleman crouched down a little, meeting the seated man eye to eye. "I hope that's another lie." Wendy had never heard him sound so tired. "Because if it isn't, I'll have to get the password from you directly. I've been trained to do a lot of things, as you know. I don't have to enjoy them."

Neville shrank back in the chair. "You wouldn't."

His expression wasn't remotely like a smile. "Two minutes ago I was a homicidal maniac, or that was your intention. Make up your mind." The Middleman's voice went even softer. "You haven't made any friends here."

"I've got something," Tyler said from the desk. "At least I think so."

The Middleman stood up. "Good work. Show me."

The two dark heads leaned close together in front of the monitor. Wendy reflected that her ex and her beloved probably _would_ have been a good team if Tyler hadn't missed that job interview. _Minus the benefits, of course._ Wendy got their guns back from in front of the elevator, holstered her own and set the Middleman's aside until he had a minute.

Neville, watching it all, seemed to have decided Wendy was his best attack point. "You know they're going to kill me," he said in a voice of hollow terror.

Wendy showed her teeth. "Like you were going to kill me? Like you _did_ kill Dave the roof-jumping guy? Aw, what a shame."

"You don't have to do this."

"Kinda do, actually." She couldn't sustain a snarky tone. Wendy just wanted the mission over with, now; gloating turned out to be no comfort. "We can't exactly dump you unemployed in Greenland and expect it to stick. And even if we erase all your software, given time and money you might be able to re-create the whole thing. Like the man said, your word's worth nothing. It's cost too much already getting to the point where we _can_ stop you by killing you. Be damned if we're going to do it over again." Neville opened his mouth; Wendy laid a hand on her gun and he shut it again.

Her voice dropped. "Want to hear the funny part? I actually _would_ spare your life if there was a way. Not for you; you're scum. Because even after all you've done, all you tried to do, putting you down like a mad dog is going to cost him."

"I think that's all of them," Tyler said, at the desk. "There might be inert copies in the offsite static backups -- but they'd be locked with the same security code he used to blackmail you guys. Unless either he or I go looking, any copies are a useless string of ones and zeroes."

"Can you trust yourself not to?" The Middleman made it a straightforward question, one team member to another. Wendy saw Tyler warm to the tone, the implicit trust, without fully realizing it. _Yeah, he would have been good_. "He's tampered with your mind over a long period of time," the Middleman went on. "You have some of Neville's memories; could part of his personality have come with them?"

"I feel like me." Tyler glanced across the room. "I hate him more than you can... well, I guess you _can_ possibly imagine. Exactly that amount."

They looked at Neville with the same flat expression. _Pure soldier_, Wendy thought again. Cops could arrest people, preachers could tell them to sin no more, but some problems could only be solved by death. Nobody had to like it that way.

Then Wendy's eye caught something on the floor. She reached down, held it up. "Guys. What would you think of ..."

"Justice," they said almost in unison. Looked at each other. "Absolutely poetic," Tyler added.

"I'm good with that." Wendy stood up, the whispering, keening set of wireless headphones in her hands. The ones programmed to turn her Middleman into a wild animal and, indirectly, Wendy into a pulped corpse. Manservant Neville looked into her eyes and started screaming for help.

Epilog

They didn't reach their own bed until two in the morning. Wendy didn't expect anything after the physical and emotional stresses of the day. At most, a guilt-fueled quest for redemption -- which wasn't bad per se but could get exhausting.

His hands were on her as soon as they turned out the bedside lights, but there was nothing frantic about it. He was tender and thoughtful. His body was warm and sheltering above her. Slow shifting movements, aimed not at a single whiplash orgasm but a sustained, tingling sweetness that brought tears to her eyes. They'd never been closer.

"You're a lot more ... peaceful than I'd expected," Wendy said against his neck a little later. "I was worried. He pushed your buttons pretty hard."

"With a sledgehammer." The Middleman stroked her hair. "I wouldn't have looked for this myself, before. I suppose Neville over-reached himself. He had a very accurate instinct for my nightmares. Having my past uncovered, risking your affection ... above all, causing your death. He did his worst. But it was the nightmares that broke, instead of you and me ..." He shrugged, seeming surprised by his own words. "I'm not sure what's worth being afraid of any more."

_You'll find something._ Wendy didn't snark aloud. For one thing, she might be wrong. "Good. You deserve some peace of mind."

"Kantian teleology, Dubbie," he said, wry humor under the deadpan words. "Nothing in my life's been about what I _deserved_. I've been much luckier than that." He held her closer.

----

Tyler Ford called the paramedics at five in the morning. It seemed like a plausible time for an innocent houseguest to get up and discover, horrified, that Manservant Neville's personal U-Master had done something catastrophic to him. All the tumbled furniture was back in place. The single bullet hole in the wall was covered by a re-hung picture. The gun itself, wiped clean of fingerprints, lay at the bottom of Neville's underwear drawer as if it had been there for years.

The paper-thin story worked because there wasn't a physical mark on Manservant Neville. No chemicals in his blood either, no matter how thoroughly they'd test him when he reached the hospital. _Wendy's guy has a lot of self-control_ The idea of killing the helpless man had crossed Tyler's own mind more than once during the long, sleepless night.

The lawyers and secretaries and Vice President of Corporate Public Relations arrived before Neville's comatose body left for the hospital. Tyler smoothed the rough edges of the cover story by not telling it very well. He made his pattern of hesitations and guilty flinches suggest an undignified sexual episode gone wrong, not a failed attempt at world conquest. The story got an unexpected boost when a red-faced lawyer revealed that Neville had given Tyler full power of attorney in his personal affairs -- and signed over a healthy block of FATBOY stock -- three days after Tyler joined the company.

_You really did think you could make me into another you by overwriting my memories,_ Tyler said to the ghost in the back of his mind. _Or at least you hoped so, and you didn't want either of your selves to be broke. Dumb idea. If you __**had**__ turned me into another Neville, he would have been just as cutthroat mean to the original as the original was to the rest of the world. No honor among Evil Overlords._

Neville's specter was fading into a vague tip-of-the-tongue familiarity with company procedures and computer skills. Tyler used it while he had it, set up one more search of the company network and data backups for copies of the mind-control software. The last one he'd found had been fragmentary and hopelessly outdated, but it never hurt to be sure. In spare moments -- Neville had been a confirmed multi-tasker -- Tyler worked on an anonymous e-mail that described Neville's software meltdown in the scariest possible terms.

The PR department would be helpless to stop the rumors when Neville really _was_ a vegetable, unable to show himself in public. Even if he did recover, in days or weeks or months, he'd have damn little corporate empire to come back to. Certainly no huge reserve of U-Master customers happy to let him into their brains. A device that had turned its own creator's mind to mush was going to be as popular as chocolate-and-cholera ice cream.

_And you'll be dirt poor yourself, if you make FATBOY stock worthless,_ said the Neville in the back of his mind.

_Been there, done that._

_If the real me ever does regain his senses, he'll know you did this to him. Your straitlaced friends may be safe behind their organization and alien technology, but __**you'll**__ be dead meat. He's bound to have that much money and power left._

_That's not the worst thing that could happen. You taught me about worst things, remember?_

Tyler hit send on the e-mail, and smiled. For the first time in weeks, he had an idea for a song.


End file.
